I HELD MY PEACE, AND RESPECTFULLY TOUCHED MY CAP,
INWARDLY CALLING HER THE BEAUTY THAT SHE WAS.
From the lawns I go to the kitchen, and offer my services to the chef. Usually he has ready for me a basket of potatoes to peel. In a little shed by the kitchen-door I sit and peel endlessly. The servants are flocking in and out through the open door in the fetid air. The heat is of the suffocating kind, in which the heavy air lies dead. It is nearing the dinner-hour, and everyone must work with almost a frenzy of effort. The high tension communicates itself to us all, and we feel the nervous strain upon our tempers. The hundred and one petty annoyances which cause the friction of household service prove too much, and the tension bursts into a furious quarrel between the Irish pastry-cook and the negro head-waiter. No one has time to heed them, but his storming oaths and her plaintive, whining key, maintained with provoking tenacity, whatever relief they bring to them, are far from soothing to the rest of us.
The maids are gathered from all parts of the hotel. Most of them have been on duty since six o'clock, and after the morning's work there now awaits them the rush of serving dinner. Want of sufficient sleep and utter physical weariness have drawn deep lines in their faces. Presently one of them, a slender young girl, sinks exhausted into a seat, and we hear her notion of the summum bonum: "Oh, I wish I was rich, and could swing all day in a hammock!" I follow the direction of her eyes. Across a wide stretch of lawn and in the shade of some clustering maples I see the gleam of a white dress rocking gently in a hammock, and I catch the flutter of a fan and the light on an open page.
Sometimes I am in the region of the kitchen during the dinner-hour itself. As an experience, I fancy that it is not unlike that of being behind the scenes in the course of the play. The kitchen and pantry are ill-ventilated, and are hot to suffocation. About a counter-like partition which separates the two rooms crowd the eager waitresses, rehearsing in shrill tones their orders to the chef and his assistant. There is a babel of voices striving to be heard, and a ceaseless clatter of dishes, and a hurrying to and fro. The chef is not a bad fellow, but his temper is rarely proof against the harassing annoyances incident upon serving a dinner, and he loses it in a torrent of oaths. The volume of noise increases until the height of dinner is reached and passed, and then it subsides, quite like a thunder-storm.
The afternoon's work keeps me, for the most part, in my own regions. The lamps must first be cleaned and filled, and then the billiard-tables brushed for the evening play, and there may remain unfinished work on the grounds, which claims me until it is time to sweep the verandas again.
When I am out of the office I must be careful that the doors and the windows are open, and my ears attentive to the bell; for I am porter and bell-boy in one.
A bell-boy is sometimes at a disadvantage. He is not supposed to explain, and circumstances may wrong him.
The bell rings. I run to the indicator, and then climb to the door that bears the corresponding number. A lady asks for a pitcher of ice-water. Unluckily the ice-chest is locked, and the key, I learn, is in the keeping of the head-waiter. After hasty search, I find that official seated on a rock in the shade behind the barn, conversing with some of the hands. He tells me that there is no ice in the chest, and advises my going to the ice-house. I do so with all possible speed, and am fortunate enough to find a piece of loose ice not far below the surface of saw-dust. Back to the kitchen I run with it, wash it, and chop it into fragments. But all this has taken time; it is very hot, and the lady, no doubt, is very thirsty. As I hand her the pitcher of water, her caustic acknowledgment expresses anything but gratitude.
The verandas are no sooner swept for the afternoon than the stage appears from the station. I must be in attendance to relieve the newly arrived guests of their lighter luggage and, with the help of one of the stable-boys, to carry their trunks to their rooms.
It was in such services as these that I met with an insuperable difficulty. Before I launched upon the enterprise of earning my living by manual labor I settled it with myself that I would shrink from no honest work, however menial, that might fall within the range of my experiment. I confess that, in my present avocation, when it came to the necessity of cleaning the cuspidors used by a tobacco-eating gentry, the task was accomplished only after hard setting of teeth, and much involuntary contraction of muscles. But I hasten to let fall a veil already too widely drawn from the hidden rites of a porter's service. The difficulty in point was of another kind, and had to do with tips. I was not unprepared for the emergency, for the proprietor had hinted, in our first conversation, with every mark of embarrassment, and with a tone of apology for the eight dollars a month, that that amount was sure to be supplemented by gratuities. It might have been different under other circumstances; but when I had seen the guests and noted the unmistakable marks of residence in cheap flats and low-rent suburban cottages, and realized the careful husbanding of funds and the close calculation which make a summer outing possible to them, their fees were some degrees beyond the possible to me.