“Let him speak, Alicia; true feminine delicacy is not hurt by the knowledge of injustice. Temple go on.”
“Well, my lady, I have heard strange things in my time. The first thing I learned in my career was that there was one law of hygiene for ladies and another for servants. I once heard a lady say that to keep well one ought to go out at least twice a day. But the same lady would have considered her butler or her housemaid impudent and unreasonable, had they asked to go out once a day. The same thing is true as regards stimulants. I have known many ladies, young and old, who said they had to have hock at lunch, port at dinner; their doctors prescribed it, and they believed it to be indispensable to their general health. But, had the footman or kitchen-maid said they must have claret at lunch, Moselle at supper; or had the housemaid hinted that a glass of sherry would be acceptable after turning out a room, I declare their mistress would have put them down as confirmed drunkards, and would have warned her friends against any servant who asked for beer money. I beg pardon, my lord, but are you sure you do not mind my plain speaking?”
“No, my good man, we want to hear the truth, for we never heard you tell us anything but fibs before.”
“You are very funny, my lord, but you have hit it right. Yes, we told fibs, big lies even. But telling the truth never paid. This was the first commandment of the servants’ catechism. In our very first situation we became familiar with a system of deceit. Still, you know yourselves how particular you were about servants always speaking the truth! I often wondered how the upper classes would have behaved had they been in our places? I don’t think they would have done very differently under the circumstances. We have all the same perception of injustice, we all feel its sting, and as kicking against it does not help us, compromise is the only course left us. Do you not compromise more or less with your conscience, when your god, Society, sets out rules that are too stringent? We are all men, my lord, although the Duchess of Southdown thought the contrary. I heard her say one day that she would have preferred a man for a lady’s maid, as they were more punctual and less talkative; and as to the sex, that did not matter—‘a servant was not a man!’ You can’t think what a funny impression it makes on one to hear such things.”
“Then you do not believe, Temple, that masters ever could have inspired loyalty in their servants?” inquired Sinclair.
“I must ask you, sir, whether there ever existed true loyalty on the part of the master to his servants? I have rarely seen it. The distance between the classes was too great, and the gulf grew daily wider and deeper when you convinced yourselves that you were in every way different from ‘those kind of people.’ The worst of it was, that by dint of widening the gulf between us, we naturally became strangers to each other. Our personal griefs and joys you ignored; you did not want to be bothered with our worries. We were salaried to be outwardly devoted and sympathetic, to minister to your wants, rejoice in your successes, condole in your misfortunes, whilst our own hearts ached from private sorrows.”
“How you must have despised us!” said Lionel.
“What an accumulation of vindictiveness must have filled your hearts for those who used you so!” echoed Gwen.
“No, my lady, that is not quite true. I have seen more envy and hatred amongst the upper class than amongst ourselves. We accepted the injustice of our social condition, and we got out of you all we could on the sly. We made fun of you, and often put you down as not quite so wise as you gave yourselves out to be. The last kitchen-maid of the Duchess of Southdown was very comical on that point. Whenever she heard the servants relating some new freak of her grace, or some funny incident that had happened in the drawing-room, she would invariably say, whilst she washed the dishes, ‘Leave them alone, they can’t ’elp it, they know no better.’ We ended by believing the girl had hit on the real cause of the aristocracy’s behaviour, and that their caprices and vagaries could only be put down to ignorance.”
“And you were right,” suddenly remarked Eva, “we wilfully ignored the fact that you had to start life from a different point from our own, and we were horrified at you not meeting us on our level. We accused you of inferiority and ignorance, but we never thought of blaming the conditions into which we had put you.”