§6
Our old footman, Bakai, an exceedingly interesting character, was an instance of this kind. A tall man of athletic build, with large and dignified features, and an air of the profoundest reflexion, he lived to old age in the belief that a footman’s place is one of singular dignity.
This respectable old man was constantly out of temper or half-drunk, or both together. He idealised the duties of his office and attributed to them a solemn importance. He could lower the steps of a carriage with a peculiarly loud rattle; when he banged a carriage-door he made more noise than the report of a gun. He stood on the rumble surly and straight, and, every time that a hole in the road gave him a jolt, he called out to the coachman, “Easy there!” in a deep voice of displeasure, though the hole was by that time five yards behind the carriage.
His chief occupation, other than going out with the carriage, was self-imposed. It consisted in training the pantry-boys in the standard of manners demanded by the servants’ hall. As long as he was sober, this went well enough; but when he was affected by liquor, he was severe and exacting beyond belief. I sometimes tried to protect my young friends, but my authority had little weight with the Roman firmness of Bakai: he would open the door that led to the drawing-room, with the words: “This is not your place. I beg you will go, or I shall carry you out.” Not a movement, not a word, on the part of the boys, did he let pass unrebuked; and he often accompanied his words with a smack on the head, or a painful fillip, which he inflicted by an ingenious and spring-like manipulation of his finger and thumb.
When he had at last driven the boys from the room and was left alone, he transferred his attentions to his only friend, a large Newfoundland dog called Macbeth, whom he fed and brushed and petted and loved. After sitting alone for a few minutes, he would go down to the court-yard and invite Macbeth to join him in the pantry. Then he began to talk to his friend: “Foolish brute! What makes you sit outside in the frost, when there’s warmth in here? Well, what are you staring at? Can’t you answer?” and the questions were generally followed by a smack on the head. Macbeth occasionally growled at his benefactor; and then Bakai reproved him, with no weak fondness: “Do what you like for a dog, a dog it still remains: it shows its teeth at you, with never a thought of who you are. But for me, the fleas would eat you up!” And then, hurt by his friend’s ingratitude, he would take snuff angrily and throw what was left on his fingers at Macbeth’s nose. The dog would sneeze, make incredibly awkward attempts to get the snuff out of his eyes with his paw, rise in high dudgeon from the bench, and begin scratching at the door. Bakai opened the door and dismissed the dog with a kick and a final word of reproach. At this point the pantry-boys generally came back, and the sound of his knuckles on their heads began again.
We had another dog before Macbeth, a setter called Bertha. When she became very ill, Bakai put her on his bed and nursed her for some weeks. Early one morning I went into the servants’ hall. Bakai tried to say something, but his voice broke and a large tear rolled down his cheek—the dog was dead. There is another fact for the student of human nature. I don’t at all suppose that he hated the pantry-boys either; but he had a surly temper which was made worse by drinking bad spirits and unconsciously affected by his surroundings.