Something New quotes

At nine o’clock precisely the door of Number Seven Arundell Street, Leicester Square, opened and a young man stepped out.

Of all the spots in London which may fairly be described as backwaters there is none that answers so completely to the description as Arundell Street, Leicester Square.

Passing along the north sidewalk of the square, just where it joins Piccadilly, you hardly notice the bottleneck opening of the tiny cul-de-sac. Day and night the human flood roars past, ignoring it. Arundell Street is less than forty yards in length;

“I wanted to apologize,” she said, “for my abominable rudeness in laughing at you just now. It was idiotic of me and I don’t know why I did it. I’m sorry.”

Science, with a thousand triumphs to her credit, has not yet succeeded in discovering the correct reply for a young man to make who finds himself in the appalling position of being apologized to by a pretty girl.

If he says nothing he seems sullen and unforgiving. If he says anything he makes a fool of himself. Ashe, hesitating between these two courses, suddenly caught sight of the sheet of paper over which he had been poring so long.

said Ashe. “You are a human correspondence course in efficiency, one of the ones you see advertised in the back pages of the magazines, beginning, ‘Young man, are you earning enough?’ with a picture showing the deadbeat gazing wistfully at the boss’ chair.

You would galvanize a jellyfish.

”

In a bedroom on the fourth floor of the Hotel Guelph in Piccadilly, the Honorable Frederick Threepwood sat in bed, with his knees drawn up to his chin, and glared at the day with the glare of mental anguish.

He had very little mind, but what he had was suffering.

He had just remembered. It is like that in this life. You wake up, feeling as fit as a fiddle; you look at the window and see the sun, and thank heaven for a fine day;

Like many fathers in his rank of life, the Earl of Emsworth had suffered much through that problem which, with the exception of Mr. Lloyd-George, is practically the only fly in the British aristocratic amber—the problem of what to do with the younger sons.

It is useless to try to gloss over the fact⁠—in the aristocratic families of Great Britain the younger son is not required.

Apart, however, from the fact that he was a younger son, and, as such, a nuisance in any case, the honorable Freddie had always annoyed his father in a variety of ways.

He so seldom came to London these days that he was practically a stranger in the club; and in any case your Senior Conservative, when at lunch, has little leisure for observing anything not immediately on the table in front of him.

To attract attention in the dining-room of the Senior Conservative Club between the hours of one and two-thirty, you have to be a mutton chop⁠—not an earl.

It is possible that, lacking the initiative to make his way down the long aisle and find a table for himself, he might have stood there indefinitely, but for the restless activity of Adams, the head steward.

that the Honorable Freddie Threepwood was a young idiot who required perpetual restraint; and that when in doubt about anything he had merely to apply to his secretary, Rupert Baxter—except for these basic things, he never remembered anything for more than a few minutes.

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;

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.

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.

Her knowledge of Aline told her the probable tragedy was that she had lost a brooch or had been spoken to crossly by somebody; but it also told her that such tragedies bulked very large on Aline’s horizon.

Trouble, after all, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder

; and Aline was far less able to endure with fortitude the loss of a brooch than she herself to bear the loss of a position the emoluments of which meant the difference between having just enough to eat and starving.

She was regretting heartily that she had not resisted the temptation to uplift this young man and wishing that she had left him to wallow in the slothful peace in which she had found him.

It is curious how frequently in this world our attempts to stimulate and uplift swoop back on us and smite us like boomerangs.

Ashe’s presence was the direct outcome of her lecture on enterprise, and it added a complication to an already complicated venture.

Out of the gloom and into the feeble rays of the oil lamp came Joan Valentine. She had been away, tucking Aline into the car. She looked warm and cheerful. She was smiling in the old friendly way.

If girls realized their responsibilities they would be so careful when they smiled that they would probably abandon the practice altogether.

There are moments in a man’s life when a girl’s smile can have as important results as an explosion of dynamite.

If girls realized their responsibilities they would be so careful when they smiled that they would probably abandon the practice altogether.

There are moments in a man’s life when a girl’s smile can have as important results as an explosion of dynamite.

In the course of their brief acquaintance Joan had smiled at Ashe many times, but the conditions governing those occasions had not been such as to permit him to be seriously affected. He had been pleased on such occasions;

She was about to speak. In a sort of trance he watched her lips part. He waited almost reverently for the first words she should speak to him in her new role of the only authentic goddess.

“Isn’t it a shame?” she said. “I’ve just put a penny in the chocolate slot machine⁠—and it’s empty! I’ve a good mind to write to the company.”

Ashe felt as though he were listening to the strains of some grand sweet anthem.

Ashe followed her with the gait of an automaton.

Cold is the ogre that drives all beautiful things into hiding.

Below the surface of a frost-bound garden there lurk hidden bulbs, which are only biding their time to burst forth in a riot of laughing color; but shivering Nature dare not put forth her flowers until the ogre has gone.

Ashe gave up the struggle.

“Tell me all about your feet,” he said.

And Mr. Beach told him all about his feet.

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.

“Don’t talk like that,” said Ashe. “That’s another thing you have got to remember. If my treatment is to be successful you must not let yourself think in that way. You must exercise self-control mentally. You must think beautiful thoughts.”

“The idea of skinning you is a beautiful thought!” said Mr. Peters wistfully.

In order that their gayety might not be diminished and the food turned to ashes in their mouths by the absence from the festive board of Mr.

Rupert Baxter, the Earl of Emsworth’s indefatigable private secretary, was one of those men whose chief characteristic is a vague suspicion of their fellow human beings. He did not suspect them of this or that definite crime; he simply suspected them.

He prowled through life as we are told the hosts of Midian prowled.

His powers in this respect were well-known at Blandings Castle. The Earl of Emsworth said: “Baxter is invaluable—positively invaluable.” The Honorable Freddie said: “A chappie can’t take a step in this bally house without stumbling over that damn feller, Baxter!”

Among the compensations of advancing age is a wholesome pessimism, which, though it takes the fine edge off of whatever triumphs may come to us, has the admirable effect of preventing Fate from working off on us any of those gold bricks, coins with strings attached, and unhatched chickens, at which ardent youth snatches with such enthusiasm, to its subsequent disappointment.

As we emerge from the twenties we grow into a habit of mind that looks askance at Fate bearing gifts. We miss, perhaps, the occasional prize, but we also avoid leaping light-heartedly into traps.

The events of the night had whipped his mind to a restless activity. Try as he might to lose consciousness, the recollection of the plot he had discovered surged up and kept him wakeful.

It is the penalty of the suspicious type of mind that it suffers from its own activity.

From the moment he detected Mr. Peters in the act of rifling the museum and marked down Ashe as an accomplice, Baxter’s repose was doomed.

“

If I could have accepted the mouse from anyone I should certainly have accepted it from you.

”

Peters, his daughter Aline and George Emerson, there was nobody in the house who did not belong to the clan; and, as for his exerting himself to entertain, the company was lucky if it caught a glimpse of its host at meals.

Lord Emsworth belonged to the people-who-like-to-be-left-alone-to-amuse-themselves-when-they-come-to-a-place school of hosts.

He pottered about the garden in an old coat—now uprooting a weed, now wrangling with the autocrat from Scotland, who was theoretically in his service as head gardener—dreamily satisfied, when he thought of them at all, that his guests were as perfectly happy as he …

I take the count. Me for the quiet sneak to the station, without anybody knowing, and the break for London, and the wedding at the registrar’s.’ Oh, I know! I couldn’t have loved you all this time and not know. You’re weakening.”

The trouble with these supermen is that they lack reticence. They do not know how to omit. They expand their chests and whoop.

And a girl, even the mildest and sweetest of girls—even a girl like Aline Peters—cannot help resenting the note of triumph. But supermen despise tact. As far as one can gather, that is the chief difference between them and the ordinary man.

“Very well, little girl,” said George softly. “I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

The fact that it never even occurred to George Emerson he was being offensively patronizing shows the stern stuff of which these supermen are made.

The Efficient Baxter bicycled broodingly to Market Blandings for tobacco. He brooded for several reasons. He had just seen Aline Peters and George Emerson in confidential talk on the upper terrace, and that was one thing which exercised his mind, for he suspected George Emerson.

but as a matter of fact we should have been just as dull ourselves. We should not even have risen to the modest height of a Scotland Yard bungler.

Baxter was a Doctor Watson. What he wanted was a clue; but it is so hard for the novice to tell what is a clue and what is not.

And then he happened to look down—and there on the floor was a clue that nobody could have overlooked.

“It is quite black now, my dear Baxter.”

“A sort of chameleon shoe,” murmured Ashe.

The goaded secretary turned on him.

Her betrothed improved his appearance a little by hitching up his jaw. As though feeling that would be too extreme a measure, he did not close his mouth altogether; but he diminished the abyss.

The Honorable Freddie belonged to the class of persons who move through life with their mouths always restfully open.

It seemed to Aline that on this particular afternoon a strange dumbness had descended on her. She had been unable to speak to George and now she could not think of anything to say to Freddie. She looked at him and he looked at her;

Hitherto, it struck her, she had really seen so little of Freddie that she had scarcely had a chance of examining him. In the crowded world outside he had always seemed a tolerable enough person. Today, somehow, he was different. Everything was different today.

This, she took it, was a fair sample of what she might expect after marriage.

Marriage meant—to come to essentials—that two people were very often and for lengthy periods alone together, dependent on each other for mutual entertainment. What exactly would it be like, being alone often and for lengthy periods with Freddie?

He felt as he had felt in the old days when people sneaked up on him in Wall Street and tried to loosen his grip on a railroad or a pet stock. He was suffering from that form of paranoia which makes men multimillionaires.

Nobody would be foolish enough to become a multimillionaire if it were not for the desire to prove himself irresistible.

Mr. Peters obtained a small relief for his feelings by doubling the existing reward, and Ashe went off in search of Joan, hoping that this new stimulus, acting on their joint brains, might develop inspiration.

On the whole, I think I had better take this note to Jones, as I promised Judson, and see whether I can’t work something through him. Yes; that’s the best plan. I’ll be starting at once.”

Perhaps the greatest hardship in being an invalid is the fact that people come and see you and keep your spirits up.

The Honorable Freddie Threepwood suffered extremely from this. His was not a gregarious nature and it fatigued his limited brain powers to have to find conversation for his numerous visitors.

All he wanted was to be left alone to read the adventures of Gridley Quayle, and when tired of doing that to lie on his back and look at the ceiling and think of nothing.

It is your dynamic person, your energetic world’s worker, who chafes at being laid up with a sprained ankle.

The Honorable Freddie enjoyed it. From boyhood up he had loved lying in bed; and now that fate had allowed him to do this without incurring rebuke he objected to having his reveries broken up by officious relations.

“Great Scott! Are you a detective?”

Life, as many a worthy writer has pointed out, is full of ironies.

It seemed to Freddie that here was a supreme example of this fact. All these years he had wanted to meet a detective; and now that his wish had been gratified the detective was detecting him!

“I trusted that man,” he said. “I jolly well trusted him absolutely.”

“I know,” said Ashe. “There is one born every minute.”

“But”—the thing seemed to be filtering slowly into Freddie’s intelligence “what I mean to say is, I—I—thought he was such a good chap.”

“But”—the thing seemed to be filtering slowly into Freddie’s intelligence “what I mean to say is, I—I—thought he was such a good chap.”

“My short acquaintance with Mr. Jones,” said Ashe, “leads me to think that he probably is⁠—to himself.”

“I won’t have anything more to do with him.”