“The gentleman’s coat and hat, sir,” said Baxter, coming in annoyingly.
“Very well—now go,” retorted Fair peevishly. “Ask Mr. Travers to come up here the moment he arrives. Here, here—you are forgetting the telegrams. You seem to forget everything lately. You are too careless.”
“So I am, so I am,” quavered the poor old beggar, with tears in his voice. “I shall soon be of very little service, sir.”
“Nonsense,” answered Fair, touched by the old fellow’s feeling. “You have twenty years of good work before you. But, I say, Baxter, I forgot to tell you—we are leaving town tomorrow morning. Discharge all of the servants tonight. Hear me? All of them—tonight.”
“Tonight, sir?” exclaimed Baxter, dropping his little silver card-tray. “They will be expecting a month’s notice, sir.”
“That means a month’s pay, I suppose,” answered Fair sharply. “Give them a year’s pay, if you like—but get them out of the house tomorrow morning before nine o’clock. You see, I have sold the house, and the new owner takes possession at ten. You understand me? We shall, of course, take you and Anita with us—to the continent, you know.”
“I hear, sir,” replied Baxter, adding, after a dazed and groping moment, “some of them have been in our family’s service for twenty years. That is a long time, sir, and they will think it hard to be——”
“By Jove, that’s so!” exclaimed Fair, pacing up and down with a growing sense of disgust and rage at having to cramp his future into the ignominious bondage of a desperate situation. “No, I can’t turn them away. Tell them that I shall instruct my solicitor to provide for them for life—yes, tell them that. Come here, Baxter,” he went on, rapidly losing control of himself and pathetically stretching his hands out as if to grasp the love and sympathy of someone; “I haven’t been a hard master, have I? No. And when the end comes, you won’t turn against me? I—I—I—oh, damn it, clear out of here, won’t you?”
“Why, my dear young master, whatever ails you, sir?” cried the old butler, grasping the hand that Fair waved to him. “If you did but know how we all love you, sir, perhaps you would——”
“Do you? Do you?” broke in Fair feverishly. “That’s right, too. But, Baxter, things have gone wrong, and in a few hours I may need all the love that you or anybody else will give me. Get out of here, can’t you?”