Works of W. W. Jacobs

by Jacobs, W. W.

  CHAPTER VII

  THE predominant note at Berstead Place was peace. It revealed itself in the placid waters of the lake, in the trim-clipped maze of yew, and the clump of tall elms with its colony of gossiping rooks; in the well-kept gardens and the green slopes of the park. The outbuildings and the yards were so peaceful that hard-working gardeners had been known to fall asleep there while sitting on the handles of their barrows evolving new monstrosities in hybridisation.

  The only discord in this Eden was in the bosoms of Messrs. Markham and Biggs. Seldom indeed did these gentlemen indulge in direct speech, but each knew, through the painstaking Miss Mudge, exactly what the other thought of him. The knowledge did not improve their relations, and glances, threatening on the part of Mr. Biggs and contemptuous on the part of Mr. Markham, were a source of considerable interest to their fellow-servants. The page, who regarded the butler with a respect verging on idolatry, spent considerable time in trying to devise ways and means of keeping the chauffeur in his place. As a beginning he tried the raised eyebrows and icy stare of his superior, and, strolling down to the garage one morning in shirt-sleeves and green-baize apron, stood watching the foe at work.

  “Halloa, Albert!” said Mr. Biggs, who was pulling out handfuls of grease from the gear-box and stripping it from his fingers on to a piece of brown paper, “how are we?”

  “G’morning,” said Albert distantly.

  “If I’d known you were coming to pay us a visit,” said Mr. Biggs, rubbing an itching nose with the back of a soiled wrist, “we’d have had some toffee-balls for you. Wouldn’t we Bob?”

  “Or sugar-sticks,” assented the second chauffeur. “Why, what’s the matter with ‘is little face?”

  “Got a second tooth coming through, I should think,” said Mr. Biggs. “You want to rub it, Albert. Rub it with a bit o’ bone, or a india-rubber ring.”

  “When I want your advice I’ll ask you for it,” said the enraged Albert.

  “Right-o,” said Mr. Biggs good-humouredly. “If you want to see the inside of a gear-box, now’s your time. You can’t learn too much, you know. I’ve been at the job for years, and I’m always learning something fresh.”

  “I don’t want to learn that work,” said Albert, with an affected shudder. “It’s all very well for people who can’t do anything else, but it wouldn’t do for me.”

  “Hark at him!” said the amazed Mr. Biggs.

  “Reg’lar little poll-parrot,” said Bob.

  “I like to be clean,” pursued Albert. “I shouldn’t like to go about smelling like a gasworks, and leaving black marks on everything I touched.”

  “P’r’aps you’re right, Albert,” said Mr. Biggs, who was rubbing his hands hard with a piece of cotton-waste.” Ah, if I’d had your chances what a man I might ha’ been.”

  He shook his head mournfully, and taking up the paper of grease crossed over to put it in a bucket. His foot slipped suddenly, and, with a startled exclamation, he threw his right arm around Albert’s neck to save himself from falling. Bending under the shock, the boy pitched face-foremost into the parcel of grease.

  “The very place I slipped on last week. Bob,” said Mr. Biggs breathlessly. “Gave me quite a shock. Have I hurt you, Albert?”

  “P-ff!” said the unfortunate youth. “P-ff!”

  “Lor’ bless my soul!” exclaimed Mr. Biggs, in startled accents. “Look what a mess he’s made of himself. How did you do it, Albert?”

  “P-w-ff!” cried the boy, still blowing. “You did it a-purpose.”

  “Poor little poll-parrot,” said Mr. Biggs, gently. “Give me a bit of that waste, Bob, and I’ll try to clean him up a bit. He’d get into trouble if it was known he’d been hanging round the garage instead of getting on with his work. Keep still, Albert!”

  “I — I’ll tell Mr. Markham of you,” said the boy, half-crying with rage. “I’ll—”

  “Keep your mouth shut,” said Mr. Biggs, hard at work with the cotton-waste. “How do you think I can make a job of it while you go on talking?”

  “You — you’ll — get — the sack for this,” spluttered the boy.

  “Pure accident,” murmured Mr. Biggs. “You ought to be glad that you were there to save me from a nasty fall. Are you?”

  The grown-up reply that began to flow from Albert’s lips was promptly bottled up by a pad of waste.

  “Another second,” said Mr. Biggs, turning to his grinning junior, “and he would have said it and been ashamed of himself all his life. And in our garage, too.”

  “He’s got no what you might call gratefulness,” said Bob, “else he’d be glad that you’d got that little spot o’ grease in your hand to save his nose from damage.”

  “I don’t expect no thanks,” said Mr. Biggs simply. “There you are, Albert,” he continued, giving a rotary motion to the handful of waste. “You’re cleaner than I’ve ever seen you, now, and your little cheeks are shining like Ribston pippins. Any time you’d like to give us a look in we shall be pleased to see you.”

  He turned to his work again, and Albert, after fulminating in the doorway until his jaws ached, turned towards the house in search of sympathy.

  “Shouldn’t wonder if Markham had something to say about this,” remarked Mr. Biggs. “He’s always ready to listen to himself talking.”

  He saw Markham later on, but the butler made no sign. Calm and dignified in preparation for his evening duties, his manner suggested an entire aloofness from such earthly things as trouble-seeking chauffeurs.

  He put off this manner with his evening garb, and rising early in the morning for a dip in the lake, a privilege accorded by the thoughtful Carstairs to the few members of his staff who cared to avail themselves of it, thought out a few pungent remarks to improve Mr. Biggs’s circulation before entering the water. He saw the chauffeur in front of him, and, quickening his pace, entered the dressing-shed almost at the same time.

  “I want a word with you,” he said severely.

  “Fire away,” said Mr. Biggs, removing his coat and hanging it on a nail. “It’s always a pleasure to hear you talk. I heard you talking to one o’ the footmen the other day, and it was all I could do to keep from laughing.”

  “I want to know what you mean by messing the page-boy’s face up yesterday,” said the butler sternly.

  “Poor little chap!” said Mr. Biggs, with a reminiscent smile. “He did look funny; but o’ course it was quite an accident. It would have been just the same if you’d been standing there instead of him.”

  The butler choked.

  “I don’t think so,” he said, at last.

  “Only I shouldn’t have wiped it off for you,” continued Mr. Biggs. “Albert’s a nice little chap, only he’s got wrong ideas. No ambition: he wants to be a butler when he grows up.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you, my man,” said the butler, in superior accents.

  “Why, only just now you said you did,” retorted Mr. Biggs. “You don’t seem to know your own mind for two minutes together. Too much cellar-work, I suppose.”

  “What do you mean by that?” demanded the butler fiercely.

  “Putting the wine away,” replied Mr. Biggs darkly. “The smell of it confuses the intellect. At least, I suppose it’s the smell.”

  “Next time you interfere with the boy I shall report you to the guv’nor,” declared Mr. Markham.

  “Poor Albert!” said Mr. Biggs. “He wants to be a butler: a tell-tale. If he had any self-respect he’d want to be a man that uses his hands and his head. A chauffeur, say, like me. I can drive a car, and I can mend a car. If a car goes wrong on the road I can jump off and find out what it is. If it’s a small thing I can put it right on the road; if it’s a big thing, and I’ve got the tools, I can put it right in the garage. If it’s—”

  “What is it?” inquired the butler, with a disdainful smile. “An anthem?”

  “I was telling you about a man that can use his hands,” retorted Mr. Biggs.

  “I can use my
hands a bit,” said the butler, whose temper was beginning to take control.

  “To wipe a hot plate with a napkin?” inquired the other.

  “Or to knock a little sense into thick heads,” said the butler, fastening his bathing-dress as he emerged from the shed. “If it was not for my position I’d do it now.”

  “Never mind about your position,” entreated Mr. Biggs, following him up. “There couldn’t be a finer morning for it, or a softer place for you to fall on. Why, it might ha’ been made for it.”

  The butler turned a deaf ear, and rubbing his arms started to walk towards the diving-board. Mr. Biggs gave vent to a series of explosive chuckles.

  “Are you making that silly noise at me?” demanded the other, turning and clenching his fists.

  “What do you mean by ‘silly noise’?” inquired Mr. Biggs, advancing upon him.

  “A noise like a sheep with a cold,” said the butler promptly, “or an idiot boy that’s lost his ma.”

  “I suppose talking is all you can do,” sneered Mr. Biggs, and thrust his lean jaw almost into the other’s face.

  The temptation was too great, and Mr. Markham, forgetting his dignity, his situation, and above all the example expected of him by his inferiors, struck it. Mr. Biggs, with surprising suddenness, dropped to the ground.

  It was a smart blow, and the effect on Carstairs, who was leaning out of his bedroom window to inhale the morning air, was instantaneous. The men were some distance away, but the powerful binoculars in the drawer of his dressing-table were at his eyes and focused in five seconds. Then conscience pricked him, and he dashed out of his room in search of Pope. The latter, querulous in pink pyjamas and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, followed Carstairs to his room with his own glasses dangling from his arm.

  “I thought you ought to see it,” said Carstairs, who had got his glasses in action again. “I may want your advice as to how to treat the matter.”

  “Disgraceful!” grunted Pope, leaning out of the window. “Shocking! Markham’s going to win this.”

  “Biggs,” said Carstairs.

  “Markham’s got the science,” said Pope. “Ha! Bra — H’m, h-mm!”

  “I think I had better run down and stop it,” said Carstairs, with his glasses glued to his eyes.

  “You can’t run about in pyjamas,” said Pope hastily. “It wouldn’t do.”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t,” said the other. “By Jove! Markham’s got it that time.”

  “Left hook,” said Pope. “It’s jolted him, but he isn’t done yet.”

  Both gentlemen held their breath as the butler rose staggering to his feet and, moved by a common impulse, took the opportunity to wipe their glasses.

  “Markham’s going in for too much footwork,” grunted Pope. “Seems to think it’s a ballet.”

  He put up his glasses again, and both gentlemen sternly surveyed the stricken field and the two men who were putting so beautiful a morning to so base a purpose.

  “This has got to be stopped,” said Carstairs, five minutes later. “I won’t allow it. It mustn’t go on. It — I can’t see through your elbow, you know, Pope.”

  Pope apologised. “Oh, pretty!” he exclaimed. “Very pretty!”

  “Yes, but Biggs has got him again,” said Carstairs. “He’s too strong for him. Just throw on a few things and run down to them, old man.”

  “Go yourself,” said his faithful secretary.

  “Perhaps it is best to ignore it,” sighed Carstairs. “Perhaps — Oh, well done, Biggs. Well done.”

  The glasses remained motionless, fixed on a figure that lay on its back with a slack head and drawn up knees. Then they followed slowly the movements of Mr. Biggs as, after a glance at the prostrate butler, he bent over the edge of the water and proceeded to bathe his face.

  “You’ve got pretty servants, upon my word,” said Pope, as the chauffeur, having finished his ablutions, helped his enemy to his feet and steadied him into the shed. “What are you going to do about it?”

  “Same as you would,” said Carstairs; “give Markham a rise, but without telling him what it is for. He has given you a very enjoyable ten minutes.”

  Mr. Pope grinned confusedly, and, with some indistinct reference to a pot and a kettle, girded up his pink pyjamas and stalked out of the room.

  Unaware of his employer’s benevolent ideas, Mr. Markham spent the first part of the morning secreted in his sanctum with a looking-glass for sole company. Absence from duty was explained by that ever-useful complaint known as a bilious attack. The seventy-ninth peep into the glass at his right eye seemed to indicate that the illness would be of unheard-of duration.

  At ten o’clock, Carstairs and Pope having gone off motoring for the morning, he quitted his lair and, taking advantage of all the cover that offered, steered an erratic course for the village. He had heard of black eyes being painted, and, with a vague hope that Mr. William Higgins, house-painter and decorator, might be equal to the occasion, called at his place of business.

  He went round to the back of the house, and Mr. Higgins, who was sitting on a broken chair smoking a short clay and regarding the five hens kept in a wire entanglement patched with string, rose to receive him. A slight but uncontrollable start he attributed to lumbago.

  Mr. Markham plunged straight into business. “Can you paint a black eye?” he inquired abruptly.

  Mr. Higgins, who had managed to exist for fifty odd years by never declining a job, and always insisting upon being paid, whatever happened, eyed him calmly.

  “I’ve done scores of ’em,” he asseverated.

  “And keep your mouth shut?” inquired the relieved butler.

  “I shouldn’t be in the position what I am in if I couldn’t,” said Mr. Higgins, with quiet dignity. “‘Spose you take a seat while I mix up one or two shades for you to pick from.”

  He indicated the broken chair, and, fetching some pots and colours from an outhouse, seated himself on a box and mixed up paints with a stick of firewood. Satisfied at last, he extricated a piece of rough board from a pile of litter and tried the colours on it.

  “They’re all good,” he said simply. “Take your pick.”

  He held the board beside the butler’s face, raising it slowly to give each tint its due appraisement. The selection made, he loaded his brush. Mr. Markham started back.

  “I’m not a wall,” he snapped. “You want a camel-hair brush.”

  “You can have a smaller brush if you like,” said Mr. Higgins grudgingly, “but camel-’air, no. It wouldn’t do me justice.”

  He disappeared into the house, and, returning with a smaller brush, made the butler close his eye, and started operations.

  “Feels very stiff,” said the butler, when he had finished.

  “That shows it’s a good job,” said the artist. “If it didn’t feel stiff I should know as there was something wrong. I only wish I’d got a bit o’ looking-glass so as you could see yourself.”

  His gaze was so admiring that the butler’s spirits rose.

  “Give it a chance to dry even,” said Mr. Higgins, pocketing his fee;— “don’t get laughing, or whistling, or winking. It’ll wear off gradual, and nobody’ll ever even dream you’d done anything to be ashamed of. I don’t want to talk conceited, but it looks better than the other eye. More life-like.”

  Mr. Markham went home in the same furtive fashion that he had left it, his first two attempts to “look the whole world in the face” not having been as successful as the encomiums of Mr. Higgins had led him to expect. He managed to reach his quarters unobserved, and, after one horrified glance in the glass, threw himself into a chair and tried to think out his position.

  It was clear that a black eye would outlive a bilious attack, and, if he absented himself from his duties for long, he would have to submit to medical treatment. He resolved to return to duty that evening, and, if awkward questions were asked, to attribute his condition to an encounter in the dark with a knob on his bedstead.

  H
e took up his work in the dining-room that evening, and Mrs. Ginnell, who had received a full account of his misadventure from Carstairs, gazed at him in undisguised amazement. She transferred her gaze to Pope and Carstairs, who, in endeavouring to avoid her eye, met that of the butler. Conversation, at first disjointed, ceased altogether before the spectacle of a butler whose sudden increase of dignity was obviously inspired to counteract the possession of a salmon-coloured eye. A slight squeaking noise, which everybody agreed to disregard, escaped from Mrs. Ginnell.

  “Soup’s good,” said Pope, after a painful pause.

  “Excellent,” agreed Carstairs. “I think—”

  Mrs. Ginnell was offending again. She ended with a moan, and her spoon slipped into her soup as she arose hurriedly and made for the door. “Not well,” she gasped, as she passed. “Headache — don’t trouble.”

  The two gentlemen resumed their seats, but the disdainful glance of the butler as he returned from the door was too much for Pope. He got up again. “Headache,” he murmured brokenly, with a deplorable lack of invention. “Not well,” and, plunging at the door, disappeared.

  Carstairs finished his meal alone, thankful that the simmering Markham kept out of view behind his chair. He took a cup of coffee and lit a cigar, starting as he glimpsed the butler’s eye again.

  “Markham,” he said suddenly.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go and wash that stuff off your eye at once; you’ll get blood-poisoning if you are not careful. If it looks bad to-morrow, go and see a doctor.”

  “Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” said the butler.

  He poured out a glass of port with grateful care, and went off to his room rejoicing.

  “If he isn’t a gentleman,” he murmured, as he busied himself with cleansing the paint off, “he’s the best imitation I’ve ever seen. Also, he’s a sportsman.”

  CHAPTER VIII

  MRS. GINNELL, metaphorically speaking, received Mr. Knight with open arms, Mr. Peplow, who was standing by waiting to be introduced, being almost scandalised at the warmth of their greeting. The correctness of his own left nothing to be desired.