Mr. Campion's Lucky Day & Other Stories (6 page)

“You
saw
Lady Susan?” he said. “Where was she?”

“In the hall,” faltered the helpless Harold, observing only too late the abyss widening beneath his feet.

“And where were you?”

“At the top of the service stairs,” stuttered the boy.

“Where you had no right to be.”

There was a long and awful pause. Young Harold had been well grounded in the first rules of service, and “Thou shalt not give back answers” was graven on his soul.

“The young servant,” said Knowles, giving the word its true dignity, “has to leam to serve the family with his mind, his body and his affection, but without his human nature, Harold.”

“You must notice things and not notice them, if you take my meaning. That is to say, you must see everything, but only retain in your head those matters which may possibly concern you.

“I remember the case of the gentleman with kleptomania who dined with his late lordship,” he observed, unexpectedly. “Now it was my duty to notice that he had a pair of very fine salt cellars in his hip pocket when he left the table, but it was not my duty to mention the fact to him or to any one else. I made a point of helping him on with his overcoat as he left, and then I ventured to suggest that the awkward bulge spoiled the set of his coat. I begged him to allow me to send a messenger round with the contents of his pocket the following morning. I was not rude, you understand, Harold; just respectfully solicitous and, of course, firm. He gave up the salt cellars rather grudgingly, I remember, and, of course, his lordship never knew.”

The deep voice ceased, and Knowles eyed his son.

“Quiet, impersonal, and firm; that’s the line, my boy. It takes time to learn it, but it’s worth it in the end. When you’re a good butler, you know that you’re more than a man. In your sphere you are infallible. Crises may arise, difficult situations may start up and face you, but with training you can look them in the eye and not see them, if you take me.

“Besides,” he went on with apparent irrelevance, “there’s nothing so vulgar as vulgar curiosity.”

Harold followed his father’s train of thought perfectly and was silent, his mind busy fitting together the odd words he had gleaned among the whispers which had been agitating the servants’ hall all day.

Knowles, too, pondered on the unfortunate situation which had arisen above stairs and on the disastrous paragraph in the morning’s papers. However, decency and respect and even simulated ignorance he could and would enforce in his own domain below stairs, and in Knowles’ opinion it would be as well if there were another equally competent person in charge of the world outside.

He was disturbed in his thoughts by the muffled buzzing of the front door bell. What instinct persuaded the old man to answer it himself he never rightly knew, but he strode out into the passage, swept Edward, the footman, out of the way, and mounted the service stairs with a brisk purposefulness quite unlike his usual pontifical stride.

As he entered the main hall, which in deference to her Ladyship’s wishes was kept but softly lit, he was aware of a minor crisis. The front door was swinging wide and through it rushed the warm, rain-laden air of the city’s evening.

Knowles had just mastered his first sense of outrage at this unheard-of indignity when he saw the visitor. Without his pince-nez Knowles was very near-sighted, and the man was standing in the darker part of the hall by the Doric columns. The old man had to go up to him before his features were clearly visible, yet Knowles had recognised him the moment the man had entered his blurred vision, and now, as the butler peered into those striking features, small beads of perspiration appeared upon the high forehead above the perfect face, and Knowles’ plump hands were damp and clammy as the night wind from the square.

However the quality of perfection is not lightly cast down. Knowles stood his ground and looked the newcomer glassily in the eye.

Before that stare, as unnatural as his own, the visitor wavered and turned slightly, so that the old man saw his absence of collar and another very unpleasant thing about his chest and the shoulder of his coat.

Still Knowles stood his ground and waited, as was his custom, for the visitor to speak first.

“Take me up to Lady Susan, please, Knowles.”

The butler stood perfectly still, his eyes, accustomed by long practice, focused upon those other eyes. The absence of collar and the other things Knowles no longer saw.

“Lady Susan, sir?” he said, with just the right intonation of surprise. “Ah—surely you’re under some misapprehension, sir, if I may venture to say so?”

“Don’t be a fool, Knowles.” The newcomer was angry. “You know perfectly well who I am—Captain Lester Phillips. You’ve admitted me a dozen times. Take me up to Lady Susan immediately, or must I go without you?”

He made a movement, but in spite of an icy chill of apprehension Knowles stood firm. He gave his celebrated little cough.

“I—ah—still think you’ve made a mistake, sir,” he said gently. “Lady Susan no longer lives here.”

“No longer lives here?” The newcomer’s eyes wavered for a moment. “But I saw her here only two nights ago—only last Wednesday. You showed me up yourself.”

He paused, and Knowles, seizing the advantage, spoke again.

“Not last Wednesday, sir,” he said, calmly. “That was—ah—if you’ll forgive me saying so, some years ago, long before the family moved. I stayed with the house, sir. You’ll hardly come up and see Mr. Goldberger, sir?”

“Mr. Goldberger?”

“My new employer, sir.”

“I see.”

A bewildered expression had crept over the visitor’s pallid features. He looked lost, frightened. If it had not been for the absence of collar and those other things Knowles could have found it in his heart to sympathise with him. As it was, he ushered him gently towards the open door.

On the threshold the stranger paused.

“You don’t know where’s she living now?”

“No, sir. I couldn’t say.” Knowles swallowed. “After the family migrated to Australia I lost touch with them, sir.”

“Australia? Are you sure, Knowles?”

Knowles’ eyes did not falter. “Australia, sir.”

“How long have they been there?”

“It must be nearly ten years, sir.”

Just for a moment the visitor’s wild eyes rested upon the perfect face.

“You don’t look changed, Knowles.”

It was then, perhaps, that, in the face of the greatest danger, Knowles reached the highest peak of his perfection.

“I never change, sir,” he said magnificently.

“I see.”

Without further ado the tall figure flung itself down the stone steps and strode out into the square, where the blue London night swallowed it.

Knowles so far forgot himself as to watch until it disappeared. Then he closed the door and went slowly down to his pantry. Ignoring Harold’s inquiring glance, he passed on down the narrow room to his private cupboard, which he unlocked.

The bottle of Napoleon brandy left to him by name in the will of his late lordship was brought forth. Knowles poured himself out a generous tot and swallowed most of it. Then he replaced the bottle, locked the cupboard, and, assuming his pince-nez, drew his own copy of the
Daily Trumpet
from its place among the silver-towels. The late news paragraph slipped in on the front page was not hard to find. Nearly every servant in the house had stolen a surreptitious glance at it at least once that day. Old Knowles read it through once more.

YOUNG GUARDSMAN’S TRAGIC DEATH.

“Early this morning the valet of Captain Geoffrey Lester Phillips, son of Major-General and Mrs. Lester Phillips, of Horton, in Norfolk, found his employer sitting before his dressing table, dead. His throat had been cut and a non-safety razor lay by his side.

“It was announced in these columns only the day before yesterday that the marriage which had been arranged between Captain Lester Phillips and Lady Susan, younger daughter of Lord Tollesbury, would not take place.”

Knowles folded the paper and returned it to the drawer. For a while he sipped the remainder of his Napoleon with a connoisseur’s relish. Then he glanced at Harold.

“And that’s another thing, my lad,” he said. “The perfect butler should be able to turn away anybody without giving offence—anybody or
anything.’

The idea was born to her on her nineteenth birthday and she took to it eagerly and nursed it lovingly. It was a great idea and she recognised it for that and from that day dedicated her life to it. What happened therefore sprang from it and from no other source.

At the time she was already beautiful in a fine and unfashionable way. Five feet eleven, straight backed and deep bosomed, she had thick yellow hair hanging to her waist and a great clear-cut face with a wide smooth forehead, a long nose delicately moulded with the same clean mastery that one notices in petals of camellias, and eyes that looked proudly and yet simply out at one from under the clear narrow arches of her brows.

Louis Fyshe, the crookback poet, said “A Northern Queen,” when he first saw her. There was, as Fyshe said, something queenly about her even then, something aloof and regal, and there was the north there too. The little crookback had a genius for seeing things like that and putting a twisted forefinger down upon them. Oh, yes, the north was there; under the fairness there was the darkness, the dark barbaric god-likeness of the north; and the white-hot passion that is born rather of ice than of the warm languor of the sun.

She was a thing apart from the flimsy, witty crowd around her; she towered above them in every way. Just as her strong beautiful body was larger than theirs, so was her mind and the strange uncivilised soul of her. She had not their little brilliancies—the vivid sparklings of small jewels. The meshes of her brain were too wide to catch such gold fish. The elemental human was so strong in her that they could not but recognise it and be drawn.

One after another they all proposed to her. At one time it was said that there was not an eligible man of her acquaintance whom she had not refused. Yet no one blamed her, no one called her foolish. Everyone wondered, of course, but that was all.

It was Fyshe who discovered the reason. Fyshe who, in one of his brilliant flashes of insight, laid bare the great idea, or rather ideal, which she served so tenaciously.

“She’s waiting for a match,” he said.

“So’s her mother—anxiously,” said someone and giggled.

Fyshe turned on him scathingly.

“You misunderstand me,” he said, “I was speaking English—I said a match. She’s waiting for a match, a real match. A man who can fit her. That’s her great idea.”

As soon as it was spoken people realized that they knew it. Elfrida was waiting for a lord and master. One could almost imagine her challenging her suitors to a hurling match or a bout with spears. Once it had been pointed out it was obvious.

Fyshe went on, his little bird’s face wrinkling hideously as he talked and his dark eyes burning.

“Yes, she’s waiting for a god. Poor Northern Queen, she’s born too late. The world’s too civilized, too fined down, too crowded for her now. I’m afraid she’ll wait for ever; it’s not likely there’ll be another strayed Olympian born this age.”

“All the same, whatever you say about gods and matches, Fyshe, she’s turned down half the best fellows in town,” said Meyer from his corner by the fireside.

“Yes, and half of them didn’t come up to her shoulder,” said Fyshe quickly, “and the other half couldn’t for the life of them follow the big simple way she reasons. She has five times more physical courage than anyone among them and I don’t believe there’s one, save young Thynne, the fighter, who could knock her down.”

Meyer began to laugh.

“My dear, boy,” he said, “this is London, England, in the twentieth century. It’s not necessary for a husband to be able to knock his wife down nowadays.”

“But don’t you see that Elfrida is not a product of nowadays?” Fyshe was growing angry and his jaw twisted in a peculiarly ugly way. “Elfrida is bom out of her time, she belongs to the age of gods and heroes, she doesn’t fit in here, she’s a barbarian-a gentle barbarian who finds the world too small, too finicky for her. Just as the gilt chairs in her mother’s hideous drawing-room are too small, too dainty, for her to sit upon comfortably, so the ideas, the wit, the fashions, the cynicisms of the men who love her are all too dainty, too exquisitely intricate for her to grasp. She’s too big for them, that’s all.”

“It’s a darn pity then,” said Meyers dryly, “because she’ll never get a husband at the rate she’s going.”

“I’d rather see her dead than married to a misfit.”

Fyshe spoke quietly and it was pretty obvious that the man was more than half in love with her himself.

“I’d rather see her dead!” he repeated. “It’s her great idea. The ideal she’s set herself. She knows that could she find her match, the man physically, mentally, spiritually her complement, then nothing could stop them. They would be the perfect product of the earth, the natural lords of it. She realizes that, I’m sure of it. Quiet and honest with herself she simply sits waiting for her complement, steadily turning away all comers who would make her but three-quarters of a perfect whole.” He paused and added bitterly, “Some of us couldn’t even make her that.”

Again there was something in his voice which made the rest glance at him sharply. It was queer to see him blush, it made his dark face more murky than ever, and his eyes grew almost red and shone painfully. Presently he left, then they pulled his arguments to pieces but he was right. Elfrida was waiting, waiting for the man to match.

He came quite suddenly.

Eric Ponsonby, who was also in the Guards, took him along to the Audley Street house one day. Meyer saw the meeting. He said he was sitting in the drawing-room facing the door and forming part of the group round Elfrida, who sat in one of the high-backed chairs by the window, when Eric and Vickers came in.

Meyer admitted he was impressed himself by the man’s appearance. He was a most amazing-looking fellow. Tall as a giant, sinewy as Cain, yet supple and fair-skinned. He looked clever, too, with a wide firm mouth and eyes that stared straight in at one’s own when he spoke.