“O, Pelleas!” I said miserably, as we went down the grand staircase, “it’s a terrible business, this attempt at philanthropy among the servants in high places.”
“At all events,” said Pelleas brightly, “we are not plotting to improve them. Though of course if that is done in the right way—” he added, not to be thought light-minded. Pelleas has an adorable habit of saying the most rebellious things, but it is simply because he is of opinion that a great deal of nonsense is talked by those who have not the brains to rebel.
On a sudden impulse he drew me aside to the latticed window of the landing and pushed it ajar. The moon rode high above the oaks; it was as if the night stood aside in delighted silence in this exalted moment of the moon’s full. Around the casement the roses gathered, so that the air was sweet.
“Ah, well,” Pelleas said softly, “I dare say they’ll like it. They must—‘in such a night.’ We’ll leave them to themselves in a little while. The Reverend Arthur Didbin will be here at ten, remember.”
The great honey-tongued clock beside us touched the silence with the half hour.
“Pelleas,” I whispered him, “O, Pelleas. It was fifty years ago this very minute. We were saying, ‘I will’ and ‘I will.’”
“Well,” said Pelleas, “we have, dear. Though we may yet fall out on a question of Angora cats and the proper way to lay an open fire.”
We smiled, but we understood. And we lingered for a moment in silence. Let me say to all skeptics that it is worth being married an hundred years to attain such a moment as that.
Then as we went down the stairs the dining-room door suddenly burst open with an amazing, eerie clamour; and into the great oak-paneled hall marched the haughty Scotch butler in full Highland costume, plaid and bare knees and feather, playing on his bagpipe like mad. No peril, then, of his being bored to extinction, nor the others, as we were soon to find. For the bagpipe gave the signal and immediately came pouring from below stairs the great procession of our guests. My old head grows quite giddy as I try to recount them. There were Mrs. Woods, very grave, a little hoarse, and clothed on with black satin; and the mother of Bonnie in brown silk and a cameo pin, as became a daughter of the Hittites; and Bonnie herself of exquisite prettiness in white muslin and rosebuds; and Karl in his well-brushed black; and “Reddie,” his face shining above a flaming cravat; and the cook and the head laundress who had entered competitive toilettes like any gentlewomen; and the other menservants in decent apparel; and a bevy of chic maids in crisp finery and very high heels. Led by Mrs. Woods they came streaming toward us and shook our hands—was ever such a picture anywhere, I wondered, as I saw them moving between the priceless tapestries and clustering about the vast marble fireplace that came from the quarries of Africa. And to our unbounded gratification they seemed immensely to like it all and not to have lost their respect for us because we were civil to them. Then when, presently, we had sent “Reddie” and his fiddle up to the pillared musicians’ gallery, they all rose to his first strains and in an instant the Scotch butler had led out the crispest and highest-heeled of the maids and they all danced away with a will. Danced very well too. It is amazing how tricks of deportment are communicable from class to class. If I were to offer to solve the servant problem I conclude that I would suggest to all employers: Be gentlemen and gentlewomen yourselves and live with all dignity and daintiness. Though I dare say that I am a very impractical old woman, but all the virtue in the world does not lie in practicality either.
In a little time Pelleas slipped away to brew a steaming punch—a harmless steaming punch made from a recipe which my mother, who was a high church woman, always compounded for dining archbishops and the like. Bonnie and Karl did not dance but sat upon an old stone window seat brought from Thebes and watched with happy eyes. And when the punch came in we wheeled it before them and they served every one.