§ 1
the cat is the offspring of a cat and the dog of a dog, but butlers and lady’s maids do not reproduce their kind. they have other duties.
so their successors have to be sought among the prolific, and particularly among the prolific on great estates. such are gardeners, but not under-gardeners, gamekeepers, and coachmen—but not lodge people, because their years are too great and their lodges too small. and among those to whom this opportunity of entering service came was young bealby, who was the stepson of mr. darling, the gardener of shonts.
everyone knows the glories of shonts. its fa?ade. its two towers. the great marble pond. the terraces where the peacocks walk and the lower lake with the black and white swans. the great park and the avenue. the view of the river winding away across the blue country. and of the shonts velasquez—but that is now in america. and the shonts rubens, which is 2in the national gallery. and the shonts porcelain. and the shonts past history; it was a refuge for the old faith; it had priest’s holes and secret passages. and how at last the marquis had to let shonts to the laxtons—the peptonized milk and baby soother people—for a long term of years. it was a splendid chance for any boy to begin his knowledge of service in so great an establishment, and only the natural perversity of human nature can explain the violent objection young bealby took to anything of the sort. he did. he said he did not want to be a servant, and that he would not go and be a good boy and try his very best in that state of life to which it had pleased god to call him at shonts. on the contrary.
he communicated these views suddenly to his mother as she was preparing a steak and kidney pie in the bright little kitchen of the gardener’s cottage. he came in with his hair all ruffled and his face hot and distinctly dirty, and his hands in his trousers pockets in the way he had been repeatedly told not to.
“mother,” he said, “i’m not going to be a steward’s boy at the house anyhow, not if you tell me to, not till you’re blue in the face. so that’s all about it.”
this delivered, he remained panting, having no further breath left in him.
his mother was a thin firm woman. she paused in her rolling of the dough until he had finished, and then she made a strong broadening sweep of the rolling pin, and remained facing him, 3leaning forward on that implement with her head a little on one side.
“you will do,” she said, “whatsoever your father has said you will do.”
“’e isn’t my father,” said young bealby.
his mother gave a snapping nod of the head expressive of extreme determination.
“anyhow i ain’t going to do it,” said young bealby, and feeling the conversation was difficult to sustain he moved towards the staircase door with a view to slamming it.
“you’ll do it,” said his mother, “right enough.”
“you see whether i do,” said young bealby, and then got in his door-slam rather hurriedly because of steps outside.
mr. darling came in out of the sunshine a few moments later. he was a large, many-pocketed, earthy-whiskered man with a clean-shaven determined mouth, and he carried a large pale cucumber in his hand.
“i tole him,” he said.
“what did he say?” asked his wife.
“nuthin’,” said mr. darling.
“’e says ’e won’t,” said mrs. darling.
mr. darling regarded her thoughtfully for a moment.
“i never see such a boy,” said mr. darling. “why—’e’s got to.”
§ 2
but young bealby maintained an obstinate fight against the inevitable.
he had no gift of lucid exposition. “i ain’t 4going to be a servant,” he said. “i don’t see what right people have making a servant of me.”
“you got to be something,” said mr. darling.
“everybody’s got to be something,” said mrs. darling.
“then let me be something else,” said young bealby.
“i dessay you’d like to be a gentleman,” said mr. darling.
“i wouldn’t mind,” said young bealby.
“you got to be what your opportunities give you,” said mr. darling.
young bealby became breathless. “why shouldn’t i be an engine driver?” he asked.
“all oily,” said his mother. “and getting yourself killed in an accident. and got to pay fines. you’d like to be an engine driver.”
“or a soldier.”
“oo!—a swaddy!” said mr. darling decisively.
“or the sea.”
“with that weak stummik of yours,” said mrs. darling.
“besides which,” said mr. darling, “it’s been arranged for you to go up to the ’ouse the very first of next month. and your box and everything ready.”
young bealby became very red in the face. “i won’t go,” he said very faintly.
“you will,” said mr. darling, “if i ’ave to take you by the collar and the slack of your breeches to get you there.”
5
§ 3
the heart of young bealby was a coal of fire within his breast as—unassisted—he went across the dewy park up to the great house, whither his box was to follow him.
he thought the world a “rotten show.”
he also said, apparently to two does and a fawn, “if you think i’m going to stand it, you know, you’re jolly-well mistaken.”
i do not attempt to justify his prejudice against honourable usefulness in a domestic capacity. he had it. perhaps there is something in the air of highbury, where he had spent the past eight years of his life, that leads to democratic ideals. it is one of those new places where estates seem almost forgotten. perhaps too there was something in the bealby strain....
i think he would have objected to any employment at all. hitherto he had been a remarkably free boy with a considerable gusto about his freedom. why should that end? the little village mixed school had been a soft job for his cockney wits, and for a year and a half he had been top boy. why not go on being top boy?
instead of which, under threats, he had to go across the sunlit corner of the park, through that slanting morning sunlight which had been so often the prelude to golden days of leafy wanderings! he had to go past the corner of the laundry where he had so often played cricket with the coachman’s boys (already swallowed up into the working world), he had to follow the 6laundry wall to the end of the kitchen, and there, where the steps go down and underground, he had to say farewell to the sunlight, farewell to childhood, boyhood, freedom. he had to go down and along the stone corridor to the pantry, and there he had to ask for mr. mergleson. he paused on the top step and looked up at the blue sky across which a hawk was slowly drifting. his eyes followed the hawk out of sight beyond a cypress bough, but indeed he was not thinking about the hawk, he was not seeing the hawk; he was struggling with a last wild impulse of his ferial nature. “why not sling it?” his ferial nature was asking. “why not even now—do a bunk?”
it would have been better for him perhaps and better for mr. mergleson and better for shonts if he had yielded to the whisper of the tempter. but his heart was heavy within him, and he had no lunch. and never a penny. one can do but a very little bunk on an empty belly! “must” was written all over him. he went down the steps.
the passage was long and cool and at the end of it was a swing door. through that and then to the left, he knew one had to go, past the stillroom and so to the pantry. the maids were at breakfast in the stillroom with the door open. the grimace he made in passing was intended rather to entertain than to insult, and anyhow a chap must do something with his face. and then he came to the pantry and into the presence of mr. mergleson.
7mr. mergleson was in his shirt-sleeves and generally dishevelled, having an early cup of tea in an atmosphere full of the bleak memories of overnight. he was an ample man with a large nose, a vast under lip and mutton-chop side-whiskers. his voice would have suited a succulent parrot. he took out a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and regarded it. “ten minutes past seven, young man,” he said, “isn’t seven o’clock.”
young bealby made no articulate answer.
“just stand there for a minute,” said mr. mergleson, “and when i’m at libbuty i’ll run through your duties.” and almost ostentatiously he gave himself up to the enjoyment of his cup of tea.
three other gentlemen in deshabille sat at table with mr. mergleson. they regarded young bealby with attention, and the youngest, a red-haired, barefaced youth in shirt-sleeves and a green apron was moved to a grimace that was clearly designed to echo the scowl on young bealby’s features.
the fury that had been subdued by a momentary awe of mr. mergleson revived and gathered force. young bealby’s face became scarlet, his eyes filled with tears and his mind with the need for movement. after all,—he wouldn’t stand it. he turned round abruptly and made for the door.
“where’n earth you going to?” cried mr. mergleson.
“he’s shy!” cried the second footman.
“steady on!” cried the first footman and had him by the shoulder in the doorway.
8“lemme go!” howled the new recruit, struggling. “i won’t be a blooming servant. i won’t.”
“here!” cried mr. mergleson, gesticulating with his teaspoon, “bring ’im to the end of the table there. what’s this about a blooming servant?”
bealby, suddenly blubbering, was replaced at the end of the table.
“may i ask what’s this about a blooming servant?” asked mr. mergleson.
sniff and silence.
“did i understand you to say that you ain’t going to be a blooming servant, young bealby?”
“yes,” said young bealby.
“thomas,” said mr. mergleson, “just smack ’is ’ed. smack it rather ’ard....”
things too rapid to relate occurred. “so you’d bite, would you?” said thomas....
“ah!” said mr. mergleson. “got ’im! that one!” ...
“just smack ’is ’ed once more,” said mr. mergleson....
“and now you just stand there, young man, until i’m at libbuty to attend to you further,” said mr. mergleson, and finished his tea slowly and eloquently....
the second footman rubbed his shin thoughtfully.
“if i got to smack ’is ’ed much,” he said, “’e’d better change into his slippers.”
“take him to ’is room,” said mr. mergleson getting up. “see ’e washes the grief and grubbiness off ’is face in the handwash at the end of 9the passage and make him put on his slippers. then show ’im ’ow to lay the table in the steward’s room.”
§ 4
the duties to which bealby was introduced struck him as perplexingly various, undesirably numerous, uninteresting and difficult to remember, and also he did not try to remember them very well because he wanted to do them as badly as possible and he thought that forgetting would be a good way of starting at that. he was beginning at the bottom of the ladder; to him it fell to wait on the upper servants, and the green baize door at the top of the service staircase was the limit of his range. his room was a small wedge-shaped apartment under some steps leading to the servants’ hall, lit by a window that did not open and that gave upon the underground passage. he received his instructions in a state of crumpled mutinousness, but for a day his desire to be remarkably impossible was more than counterbalanced by his respect for the large able hands of the four man-servants, his seniors, and by a disinclination to be returned too promptly to the gardens. then in a tentative manner he broke two plates and got his head smacked by mr. mergleson himself. mr. mergleson gave a staccato slap quite as powerful as thomas’s but otherwise different. the hand of mr. mergleson was large and fat and he got his effects by dash, thomas’s was horny and lingered. after that young bealby put salt in the teapot in which the 10housekeeper made tea. but that he observed she washed out with hot water before she put in the tea. it was clear that he had wasted his salt, which ought to have gone into the kettle.
next time,—the kettle.
beyond telling him his duties almost excessively nobody conversed with young bealby during the long hours of his first day in service. at midday dinner in the servants’ hall, he made one of the kitchen-maids giggle by pulling faces intended to be delicately suggestive of mr. mergleson, but that was his nearest approach to disinterested human intercourse.
when the hour for retirement came,—“get out of it. go to bed, you dirty little kicker,” said thomas. “we’ve had about enough of you for one day”—young bealby sat for a long time on the edge of his bed weighing the possibilities of arson and poison. he wished he had some poison. some sort of poison with a medieval manner, poison that hurts before it kills. also he produced a small penny pocket-book with a glazed black cover and blue edges. he headed one page of this “mergleson” and entered beneath it three black crosses. then he opened an account to thomas, who was manifestly destined to be his principal creditor. bealby was not a forgiving boy. at the village school they had been too busy making him a good churchman to attend to things like that. there were a lot of crosses for thomas.
and while bealby made these sinister memoranda downstairs lady laxton—for laxton 11had bought a baronetcy for twenty thousand down to the party funds and a tip to the whip over the peptonized milk flotation—lady laxton, a couple of floors above bealby’s ruffled head mused over her approaching week-end party. it was an important week-end party. the lord chancellor of england was coming. never before had she had so much as a member of the cabinet at shonts. he was coming, and do what she would she could not help but connect it with her very strong desire to see the master of shonts in the clear scarlet of a deputy lieutenant. peter would look so well in that. the lord chancellor was coming, and to meet him and to circle about him there were lord john woodenhouse and slinker bond, there were the countess of barracks and mrs. rampound pilby, the novelist, with her husband rampound pilby, there was professor timbre, the philosopher, and there were four smaller (though quite good) people who would run about very satisfactorily among the others. (at least she thought they would run about very satisfactorily amongst the others, not imagining any evil of her cousin captain douglas.)
all this good company in shonts filled lady laxton with a pleasant realization of progressive successes but at the same time one must confess that she felt a certain diffidence. in her heart of hearts she knew she had not made this party. it had happened to her. how it might go on happening to her, she did not know, it was beyond her control. she hoped very earnestly that everything would pass off well.
12the lord chancellor was as big a guest as any she had had. one must grow as one grows, but still,—being easy and friendly with him would be, she knew, a tremendous effort. rather like being easy and friendly with an elephant. she was not good at conversation. the task of interesting people taxed her and puzzled her....
it was slinker bond, the whip, who had arranged the whole business—after, it must be confessed, a hint from sir peter. laxton had complained that the government were neglecting this part of the country. “they ought to show up more than they do in the county,” said sir peter, and added almost carelessly, “i could easily put anybody up at shonts.” there were to be two select dinner parties and a large but still select sunday lunch to let in the countryside to the spectacle of the laxtons taking their (new) proper place at shonts....
it was not only the sense of her own deficiencies that troubled lady laxton; there were also her husband’s excesses. he had—it was no use disguising it—rather too much the manner of an employer. he had a way of getting, how could one put it?—confident at dinner and mergleson seemed to delight in filling up his glass. then he would contradict a good deal.... she felt that lord chancellors however are the sort of men one doesn’t contradict....
then the lord chancellor was said to be interested in philosophy—a difficult subject. she had got timbre to talk to him upon that. timbre was a professor of philosophy at oxford, so that 13was sure to be all right. but she wished she knew one or two good safe things to say in philosophy herself. she had long felt the need of a secretary, and now she felt it more than ever. if she had a secretary, she could just tell him what it was she wanted to talk about and he could get her one or two of the right books and mark the best passages and she could learn it all up.
she feared—it was a worrying fear—that laxton would say right out and very early in the week-end that he didn’t believe in philosophy. he had a way of saying he “didn’t believe in” large things like that,—art, philanthropy, novels, and so on. sometimes he said, “i don’t believe in all this”—art or whatever it was. she had watched people’s faces when he had said it and she had come to the conclusion that saying you don’t believe in things isn’t the sort of thing people say nowadays. it was wrong, somehow. but she did not want to tell laxton directly that it was wrong. he would remember if she did, but he had a way of taking such things rather badly at the time.... she hated him to take things badly.
“if one could invent some little hint,” she whispered to herself.
she had often wished she was better at hints.
she was, you see, a gentlewoman, modest, kindly. her people were quite good people. poor, of course. but she was not clever, she was anything but clever. and the wives of these captains of industry need to be very clever indeed if they are to escape a magnificent social isolation. they get the titles and the big places and all that 14sort of thing; people don’t at all intend to isolate them, but there is nevertheless an inadvertent avoidance....
even as she uttered these words, “if one could invent some little hint,” bealby down there less than forty feet away through the solid floor below her feet and a little to the right was wetting his stump of pencil as wet as he could in order to ensure a sufficiently emphatic fourteenth cross on the score sheet of the doomed thomas. most of the other thirteen marks were done with such hard breathing emphasis that the print of them went more than halfway through that little blue-edged book.
§ 5
the arrival of the week-end guests impressed bealby at first merely as a blessed influence that withdrew the four men-servants into that unknown world on the other side of the green baize door, but then he learnt that it also involved the appearance of five new persons, two valets and three maids, for whom places had to be laid in the steward’s room. otherwise lady laxton’s social arrangements had no more influence upon the mind of bealby than the private affairs of the emperor of china. there was something going on up there, beyond even his curiosity. all he heard of it was a distant coming and going of vehicles and some slight talk to which he was inattentive while the coachman and grooms were having a drink in the pantry—until these maids and valets appeared. they seemed to him to 15appear suddenly out of nothing, like slugs after rain, black and rather shiny, sitting about inactively and quietly consuming small matters. he disliked them, and they regarded him without affection or respect.
who cared? he indicated his feeling towards them as soon as he was out of the steward’s room by a gesture of the hand and nose venerable only by reason of its antiquity.
he had things more urgent to think about than strange valets and maids. thomas had laid hands on him, jeered at him, inflicted shameful indignities on him and he wanted to kill thomas in some frightful manner. (but if possible unobtrusively.)
if he had been a little japanese boy, this would have been an entirely honourable desire. it would have been bushido and all that sort of thing. in the gardener’s stepson however it is—undesirable....
thomas, on the other hand, having remarked the red light of revenge in bealby’s eye and being secretly afraid, felt that his honour was concerned in not relaxing his persecutions. he called him “kicker” and when he did not answer to that name, he called him “snorter,” “bleater,” “snooks,” and finally tweaked his ear. then he saw fit to assume that bealby was deaf and that ear-tweaking was the only available method of address. this led on to the convention of a sign language whereby ideas were communicated to bealby by means of painful but frequently quite ingeniously symbolical freedoms with various 16parts of his person. also thomas affected to discover uncleanliness in bealby’s head and succeeded after many difficulties in putting it into a sinkful of lukewarm water.
meanwhile young bealby devoted such scanty time as he could give to reflection to debating whether it is better to attack thomas suddenly with a carving knife or throw a lighted lamp. the large pantry inkpot of pewter might be effective in its way, he thought, but he doubted whether in the event of a charge it had sufficient stopping power. he was also curiously attracted by a long two-pronged toasting-fork that hung at the side of the pantry fireplace. it had reach....
over all these dark thoughts and ill-concealed emotions mr. mergleson prevailed, large yet speedy, speedy yet exact, parroting orders and making plump gestures, performing duties and seeing that duties were performed.
matters came to a climax late on saturday night at the end of a trying day, just before mr. mergleson went round to lock up and turn out the lights.
thomas came into the pantry close behind bealby, who, greatly belated through his own inefficiency, was carrying a tray of glasses from the steward’s room, applied an ungentle hand to his neck, and ruffled up his back hair in a smart and painful manner. at the same time thomas remarked, “burrrrh!”
bealby stood still for a moment and then put down his tray on the table and, making peculiar sounds as he did so, resorted very rapidly to the 17toasting fork.... he got a prong into thomas’s chin at the first prod.
how swift are the changes of the human soul! at the moment of his thrust young bealby was a primordial savage; so soon as he saw this incredible piercing of thomas’s chin—for all the care that bealby had taken it might just as well have been thomas’s eye—he moved swiftly through the ages and became a simple christian child. he abandoned violence and fled.
the fork hung for a moment from the visage of thomas like a twisted beard of brass, and then rattled on the ground.
thomas clapped his hand to his chin and discovered blood.
“you little—!” he never found the right word (which perhaps is just as well); instead he started in pursuit of bealby.
bealby—in his sudden horror of his own act—and thomas fled headlong into the passage and made straight for the service stairs that went up into a higher world. he had little time to think. thomas with a red-smeared chin appeared in pursuit. thomas the avenger. thomas really roused. bealby shot through the green baize door and the pursuing footman pulled up only just in time not to follow him.
only just in time. he had an instinctive instant anxious fear of great dangers. he heard something, a sound as though the young of some very large animal had squeaked feebly. he had a glimpse of something black and white—and large....
18then something, some glass thing, smashed.
he steadied the green baize door which was wobbling on its brass hinges, controlled his panting breath and listened.
a low rich voice was—ejaculating. it was not bealby’s voice, it was the voice of some substantial person being quietly but deeply angry. they were the ejaculations restrained in tone but not in quality of a ripe and well-stored mind,—no boy’s thin stuff.
then very softly thomas pushed open the door—just widely enough to see and as instantly let it fall back into place.
very gently and yet with an alert rapidity he turned about and stole down the service stairs.
his superior officer appeared in the passage below.
“mr. mergleson,” he cried, “i say—mr. mergleson.”
“what’s up?” said mr. mergleson.
“he’s gone!”
“who?”
“bealby.”
“home?” this almost hopefully.
“no.”
“where?”
“up there! i think he ran against somebody.”
mr. mergleson scrutinized his subordinate’s face for a second. then he listened intently; both men listened intently.
“have to fetch him out of that,” said mr. mergleson, suddenly preparing for brisk activity.
thomas bent lower over the banisters.
19“the lord chancellor!” he whispered with white lips and a sideways gesture of his head.
“what about ’im?” said mergleson, arrested by something in the manner of thomas.
thomas’s whisper became so fine that mr. mergleson drew nearer to catch it and put up a hand to his ear. thomas repeated the last remark. “he’s just through there—on the landing—cursing and swearing—’orrible things—more like a mad turkey than a human being.”
“where’s bealby?”
“he must almost ’ave run into ’im,” said thomas after consideration.
“but now—where is he?”
thomas pantomimed infinite perplexity.
mr. mergleson reflected and decided upon his line. he came up the service staircase, lifted his chin and with an air of meek officiousness went through the green door. there was no one now on the landing, there was nothing remarkable on the landing except a broken tumbler, but half-way up the grand staircase stood the lord chancellor. under one arm the great jurist carried a soda water syphon and he grasped a decanter of whisky in his hand. he turned sharply at the sound of the green baize door and bent upon mr. mergleson the most terrible eyebrows that ever, surely! adorned a legal visage. he was very red in the face and savage-looking.
“was it you,” he said with a threatening gesture of the decanter, and his voice betrayed a noble indignation, “was it you who slapped me behind?”
20“slapped you behind, me lord??”
“slapped me behind. don’t i speak—plainly?”
“i—such a libbuty, me lord!”
“idiot! i ask you a plain question—”
with almost inconceivable alacrity mr. mergleson rushed up three steps, leapt forward and caught the syphon as it slipped from his lordship’s arm.
he caught it, but at a price. he overset and, clasping it in his hands, struck his lordship first with the syphon on the left shin and then butted him with a face that was still earnestly respectful in the knees. his lordship’s legs were driven sideways, so that they were no longer beneath his centre of gravity. with a monosyllabic remark of a topographical nature his lordship collapsed upon mr. mergleson. the decanter flew out of his grasp and smashed presently with emphasis upon the landing below. the syphon, escaping from the wreckage of mr. mergleson and drawn no doubt by a natural affinity, rolled noisily from step to step in pursuit of the decanter....
it was a curious little procession that hurried down the great staircase of shonts that night. first the whisky like a winged harbinger with the pedestrian syphon in pursuit. then the great lawyer gripping the great butler by the tails of his coat and punching furiously. then mr. mergleson trying wildly to be respectful—even in disaster. first the lord chancellor dived over mr. mergleson, grappling as he passed, then mr. mergleson, attempting explanations, was pulled 21backwards over the lord chancellor; then again the lord chancellor was for a giddy but vindictive moment uppermost; a second rotation and they reached the landing.
bang! there was a deafening report—
