Then I stopped, blushing and embarrassed. How would he express his scorn! I stepped aside to give him a chance to vanish out of my plebeian neighbourhood; but, instead, said this gallant Englishman, bringing his eyeglass to bear on me, "Ow—ow—really? So did I. Never drive in anything else." Yes, there are heroes even in London drawing-rooms.
Has any one ever heard of a footman with wife and children? Can that cast-iron countenance ever unbend? Does that vacant look hide mighty thoughts, or does it hide nothing? Is a footman himself ever scorned? I do hope he is, for he has made me suffer so much. I have sometimes thought that if I owned a footman I should be too proud to live; yet on studying the faces of my fellow men so blessed, I find that they are not proud, but quite modest, and sometimes even shabby.
Yes, the owners of footmen are mostly less prosperous in appearance than their servants, while the possessor of a butler and footmen galore looks quite poor. But I do wonder where footmen go when they are old? I never saw an old footman but once, and that was in a registry office, a dim sanctuary, dotted by desks and ornamented by agitated ladies.
The awful temporary power of registry office clerks, how they do make one quail! There was about the old footman a fictitious smartness, a youthfulness so out of keeping with his haggard face that it gave me a shock. For once I was sorry that the biter was bit, and that the stony-hearted clerk behind his desk imparted his wisdom with such brevity and disdain.
I shall never forget the insinuating wistfulness with which the old man leaned across the desk, and, gracefully using his well-brushed silk hat as shield, described how bad times were, and that he would be glad to take any place at all, at any wages; all he wanted was a home. He would even go into the country—even in the country! It was too pitiful, and my heart ached for him as I recognised in the shabby smartness of his well-fitting clothes one who had "valeted" in higher spheres. By the way he held his top hat I saw how perfectly he had studied the outside of manners.
The cruelty of the beefy clerk was colossal. "We can't place old footmen, nobody wants 'em." He spoke like a machine. "But I'll take your name." The old man tripped out with a pathetic lightness as if to prove to us all by a sample how active his legs still were. So it seems that even the proudest footman should not be too proud.
I am not so afraid of butlers as I am of footmen. I have never met with an affable footman, but I have known one or two butlers who were quite fatherly. With one, in particular, I always long to shake hands. I admire his clothes so much. Never for an instant would any one take them for a gentleman's evening clothes. The magnificent girth of his ample tail coat shadows the most respectable of black trousers; they pretend to no higher sphere, but are perfect for the state of society in which they move. A rather fine head, like a respectable Roman Emperor's (if such a personage ever existed), completes an impressive personality.
I don't know what he thinks about me, but when he vouchsafes me something that is a smile and yet isn't a smile, I feel gratified. I always thought that his ancestors fought for my friends' ancestors in the battle of Agincourt, but, on inquiry, find he has been with them six months. The temporary owner of this great man is quite modest.
One of the funniest exhibitions of temporary power I once observed in America—in a church. Two of us had gone to hear a great American preacher, and we had been invited to sit in the pew of a friend, in a church to which we were strangers. We came early, and waited patiently just within the church door to be shown to the seat. Only a few stragglers had arrived, and all were waiting humbly for that important functionary—the sexton.
Now the American sexton—the verger—is a very mighty man indeed. Parsons come and go, but the sexton stays for ever. If he is not very tall and dignified in black broad-cloth, he is generally fat and fussy in the same. He picks out waiting sinners and seats them according to his boundless caprice. He knows just the kind of stray sinner who may be ushered into a charitable pew, and he knows the pews that decline to receive stray sinners under any consideration.