Fishpingle said entreatingly:
“Sleep over it, Sir Geoffrey, I beg you. Miss Joyce is like my dear lady.”
“She isn’t.”
“As you said just now, nobody could be quite like her ladyship. But Miss Joyce has her lamp.”
The Squire tartly requested him to explain. Fishpingle allowed his glance to stray to the photographs upon the mantelshelf. As he spoke he saw his mistress as she had revealed herself to him during nearly thirty years. Her light streamed over the past.
“My lady’s lamp, Sir Geoffrey, has burned so steadily. I have never seen it flame or flicker. It throws its beams on others, never on herself. But one knows that she is there, behind her lamp, always the same sweet gracious lady, serene in all weathers; above us, shining down on us, and yet of us.”
Sir Geoffrey turned abruptly and went to the window. Fishpingle perceived that he was agitated, touched. He blew his nose with quite unnecessary violence. Then he turned.
“You have described my lady better—I admit it—than I could describe her myself. But Miss Joyce has not her lamp.” His voice hardened. “Now, Ben, mark me well. I propose to put down this mutiny with a firm hand.” He held it up. “These rioting servants must be brought to heel. You will discharge Alfred after dinner and pay him a month’s wages in lieu of notice. You will send Prudence back to her mother to-night. Alfred can leave to-morrow morning. You hear me?”
While he spoke, with increasing emphasis, he marked a subtle but unmistakable change in Fishpingle. The man revealed himself divested of a butler’s smug trappings. Any air of subserviency vanished. A stranger, seeing the two men together, facing each other, at issue with each other, would have marked a resemblance, the stronger because it was of the spirit, not the flesh. In height and build they were much alike, but Fishpingle’s head was incomparably the finer.
“I hear you. A hard, cruel man has spoken, not my old master and friend.”