Chapter Seven.
Down Below.
“If I had my way,” said Mr Robbins, “I’d give orders to the poliss, and every one of ’em should be took up. They’re so fond of turning handles that I’d put ’em on the crank. I’d make ’em grind.”
“You have not the taste for the music, M’sieur Robbins,” said Mademoiselle Justine, looking up from her plate at dinner in the servants’ hall, and then glancing side wise at Dolly Preen, who was cutting her waxy potato up very small and soaking it in gravy, as she bent down so as not to show her burning face.
“Haven’t I, ma’amselle? P’r’aps not; but I had a brother who could a’most make a fiddle speak. I don’t call organs music, and I object on principle to a set of lazy ronies being encouraged about our house.”
Dolly’s face grew more scarlet, and Mademoiselle Justine’s mouth more tight as a couple of curious little curves played about the corners of her lips.
“Well, all I can say,” said the cook, “is, that he’s a very handsome man.”
“Handsome!” exclaimed Robbins, “I don’t call a man handsome as can’t shave, and never cuts his greasy hair. Handsome! Yah, a low, macaroni-eating, lazy rony, that’s what he is. There’s heaps of ’em always walking about outside the furren church doors, I’ve seen ’em myself.”
“But some of ’em’s exiles, Mr Robbins,” said the stout, amiable-looking cook. “I have ’eared as some on ’em’s princes in disguise.”
“My faith!” ejaculated Mademoiselle Justine, sardonically.
“Yes, ma’amselle, I ayve,” said cook, defiantly, “I don’t mean Frenchy exiles, with their coats buttoned up to their chins in Leicester Square, because they ain’t got no washing to put out, but Hightalian exiles.”
“Bah!” ejaculated Mademoiselle Justine, “that for you! What know you?” and she snapped her fingers.
“Pr’aps a deal more than some people thinks, and I don’t like to sit still and hear poor people sneered at because they are reduced to music.”
“But I don’t call that music,” said Robbins, contemptuously.
“Don’t you, Mr Robbins?—then I do.”
At this stage of the proceedings Dolly could bear her feelings no more, but got up and left the hall to ascend the back stairs to her own room, and sit down in a corner, and cover her face with her natty apron.
“Pore gell,” exclaimed the cook. “It’s too bad.”
“What is too bad, Madame Downes?” said Mademoiselle Framboise.
“To go on like that before the pore thing. She can’t help it.”
“Bah!” ejaculated the French maid, “it is disgust. An organ man! The child is affreusement stupide.”
“I have a heart of my own,” sighed the cook.
“Yais, but you do not go to throw it to a man like that, Madame Downes.”
“Hear, hear!” said the butler, and there was a chorus of approval.
“I say it is disgust—disgrace,” continued Mademoiselle Justine. “The girl is mad, and should be sent home to the bon papa down in the country.”
“I have a heart of my own,” said Mrs Downes again. “Ah, you needn’t laugh, Mary Ann. Some people likes footmen next door.”
The housemaid addressed tossed her head and exclaimed, “Well, I’m sure!”
“And so am I,” replied the cook, regardless of the sneers and smiles of the rest of the domestics at the table. “As I said before, I have a heart of my own, and if some people follow the example of their betters,”—here Mrs Downes stared very hard at the contemptuous countenance of the French maid,—“and like the furren element, it’s no business of nobody’s.”
Madame Justine’s eyes flashed.
“Did you make that saying for me, Madame Downes?” she flashed out viciously.
“Sayings ain’t puddens,” retorted cook.
“I say, make you that vairy witty jeer for me?” cried Mademoiselle Justine viciously.
“What I say is,” continued the cook, who, having a blunter tongue, stood on her defence, but heaping up dull verbiage round her position as a guard against the Frenchwoman’s sharp attack, “that a man’s a man, and if he’s a furrener it ain’t no fault of his. I should say he’s a count at least, and he’s very handsome.”
“Counts don’t count in this country,” said Robbins smiling, and waiting for the applause of the table.
“Count indeed!” cried Mademoiselle Justine. “Count you the fork and spoons, Mr Robbins, and see that these canaille music men come not down the air—ree. As for that green-goose girl Preen—Bah! she is a little shild for her mamma to vip and send to bed wizout her soop—paire. Madame Downes, you are a vairy foolish woman.”
Mademoiselle Justine rose from her seat, and made a movement as if to push back a chair; but she had been seated upon a form which accommodated half a dozen more domestics, and in consequence she had to climb out and glide toward the door, through which she passed with a rustle like that of a cloud of dead leaves swept into a barn.
“You’ve put ma’amselle out, Mrs Downes,” said Robbins with condescension.
“That’s easy enough done, Mr Robbins. It’s her furren blood. I don’t like young people to be sneered at if they’re a bit tender. I’ve got a heart of my own.”
“And a very good heart too, Mrs Downes,” said the butler.
“Hear, hear,” said Joseph the footman.
“Hear, hear, hear, hear, hear!” cried the page-boy, a young gentleman who lived in a constant state of suppression, and consequently in his youthful vivacity was always seeking an opportunity to come to the surface. This appeared to him to be one. His chief had paid a compliment which had been cheered by the said chief’s first-lieutenant Joseph, so Henry, the bearer of three rows of buttons, every one of which he longed to annex for purposes of play, cried “hear, hear, hear,” as the footman’s echo, and rapped loudly upon the table with the haft of his knife.
A dead silence fell upon the occupants of the servants’ hall, and Henry longed to take flight; but the butler fixed him as the Ancient Mariner did the wedding guest, and held him with his glittering eye.
“There, I knowed you’d do it,” whispered the footman. “You’re always up to some of your manoeuvres.”
“Henry,” said the butler in his most severe tones, and with the look upon his countenance that he generally reserved for Lord Barmouth, “I don’t know where you were brought up, my good boy, and I don’t want to know, but have the goodness to recollect that you are now in a nobleman’s service, where, as there is no regular steward’s room for the upper servants, you are allowed to take your meals with your superiors. I have before had occasion to complain of your behaviour, eating with your knife, breathing all over your plate, and sniffing at the table in a most disgusting way.”
“Hear, hear,” said Joseph in a low voice, and the boy thought it additionally hard that he was to be chidden while his fellow-servant in livery went free.
Mr Robbins bowed his head graciously to his underling’s softly-breathed piece of adulation, and continued—
“Once for all, my good boy, I must request that if you do not wish to be sent into the knife place to partake of your meals, you will cease your low pothouse conduct, and behave yourself properly.”
The butler turned away with a dignified air, while Henry screwed up his face as if about to cry, bent down his head, and began to kick the footman’s legs under the table—a playful piece of impudence that the lofty servitor did not resent, Master Henry the buttons knowing too much of things in general appertaining to the pantry; sundry stealings out at night when other people were in bed, and when returns were made through the area door, and from good fellowship, for though there was a vast difference in years and size, Joseph’s brain was of much the same calibre as that of the boy.
“Mrs Downes,” said the butler, after clearing his voice with a good cough, “your sentiments do you credit. You have a heart of your own, and what is more, you are English.”
“I am, Mr Robbins, I am,” said the lady addressed, and she wiped her eyes.
“Furreners are furreners,” continued the butler didactically; “but what I always will maintain is, that the English are so thoroughly English.”
There was a murmur of applause here which warmed the imposing-looking butler’s heart, and he continued—
“Your sentiments do you the greatest of credit, Mrs Downes; but you are too tender.”
“I can’t help it, Mr Robbins,” said the lady pathetically.
“And I’m sure no one wishes that you should, Mrs Downes, for I say it boldly so that all may hear,—except the two lady’s maids who have left the hall,—that a better cook, and a kinder fellow-servant never came into a house.”
Another murmur of applause, and the cook sighed, shed two more tears, and felt, to use her own words, afterward expressed, “all of a fluster.”
“Mr Robbins,” she began.
“I beg your pardon, madam, I have not finished,” said the butler, smiling. “I only wished to observe, and I must say it even if I give offence to your delicate susceptibilities, madam, that that furren papist fellow with the organ haunts Portland Place like a regular demon, smiling at weak woman, and taking of her captive, when it’s well known what lives the poor creatures live out Saffron Hill way. I should feel as I was not doing my duty toward my fellow creatures if I didn’t protest against such a man having any encouragement here.”
“Hear, hear,” said the footman again.
“Some impudent person once observed,” continued the butler, “that when a footman married he took a room in a mews for his wife, and furnished it with a tub and a looking-glass.”
“Haw, haw, haw!” laughed the buttons.
“Henry, be silent, or you will have to leave the room,” said the butler, sternly. “A tub and a looking-glass, I repeat,” he added, as he looked round, “so that his wife might try to get her living by washing, and see herself starve.”
A murmur of approval rose here from every one but the footman, who looked aggrieved, and kicked Henry beneath the table.
“But what I say is this,” continued the butler, “the pore girl who lets herself be deluded into marrying one of those lazy rony organ men may have the looking-glass, for Italians is a vain nation; but from what I know of ’em, the pore wives will never have the tub, let alone the soap.”
The butler smiled, and there was a burst of laughter, which ceased as the cook took up the defence.
“Maybe,” she said, “but what I say is this, as I’ve said before, I can feel for a woman in love, for I have a heart of my own.”
It was self-evident, for that heart was thoroughly doing its work of pumping the vital current so energetically, that the blood flushed the lady’s cheeks, rose into her forehead, and was beginning to suffuse her eyes, which looked angry, when a loud peal at the front door bell acted as a check to the discussion, Joseph going off to answer the summons as all arose, and the butler, to finish the debate, exclaimed—
“Mark my words, no good won’t come of it if that man’s allowed to haunt this house, and—Well, of all the impudence! there he is again. I shall have to call her ladyship’s attention to the fact.”
For Luigi was slowly grinding out the last new waltz, and it had such an effect on the more frivolous of the hired servants, that as soon as their elders had quitted the underground banquetting hall, two of them clasped each other, and began to spin round the place, proving that music had charms as well as the man.