Chapter VIII

(i)

door closed behind the steward's-room boy, and the Powers and Dominations faced one another across the decanters placed, according to immemorial custom, exactly half-way between Mr. Masterman and Mrs. Markham. There were also present on this occasion Mr. Simpson, own man to General Medd, a tight-lipped clean-shaven man; Miss Ferguson, lady's maid; and old Mrs. Bentham, once nurse to May and the boys. The gentlemen were in evening-dress, since they had just come down from the dining-room, leaving the footmen to finish the clearing away; and the ladies in black silk, with Mrs. Markham and Mrs. Bentham in caps as well.

It is exceedingly difficult to say how stories come downstairs from the upper department with what is, on the whole, such extraordinary accuracy and detail. It is certain that the General, Lady Beatrice, and Miss Deverell believed that they had behaved with unusual discretion. May's first letter had been received yesterday, and her second to-day at noon;

her parents had hardly, even by now, taken in all the facts; yet the story was known by now, in its main outline, by all these distinguished persons in the steward's room. Deep melancholy had reigned at the high table of the servant's hall during supper, almost as if there had been a death in the family. After the cold meat, the aristocracy had risen and filed out in silence, to eat their second course in the " Room "; and, even during this second course, little had been said, and nothing whatever about the subject that lay so heavy in the air; until, the last public ceremonial having been performed, the nuts and sweet biscuits placed in position, and the decanters arranged, James, the steward's-room boy, withdrew, closing the door softly behind him, before speeding on tiptoe down and away to the pantry to discuss what was up.

Mr. Masterman made a gesture towards the decanters. Mr. Simpson poured out a glass of sherry and held it a moment before the hanging-lamp. Then he drank it off, and set down the glass again.

Mr. Masterman began by observing that it was a sad business. Then, after a pause, he related the outlines of the story.

The difference of manner and behaviour of servants when in the presence of their employers and when in their own company is very remarkable. Upstairs they are superb actors, intelligent only as regards their duties, blind and deaf and dumb, it seems, to all else: they are that which they are trained to be, and nothing more. And even in such families as the Medd where they are promoted by long service to a higher and more confidential position — even here the invisible line is rigid and unbending: they may grieve over certain kinds of sorrows, such as a funeral; they may smile and make speeches on occasions of family rejoicing; but never for one single instant are they themselves. Downstairs, however, the world is completely different; the masks are laid aside, and they actually form opinions for themselves, and express them in a manner to which their upstair bearing affords simply no key at all.

There was Mr. Masterman, for instance. Upstairs he was a bent, grey-haired retainer, hurrying, rather pathetic, kindly, trustful, and obedient, ruling his inferiors, it seemed, without effort or difficulty, guiding them as a wheel in a machine guides the other wheels, inevitably and mechanically, a sympathetic echo to his superiors, doing the right thing always, seeing nothing he was supposed not to see, venturing only very occasionally, with an incredible humility, to the tiny sentences of intimacy to which he had become entitled by his long service. Downstairs he was a wise old man, with a very strong individuality of his own, a very great obstinacy in his own opinion, a scathing tongue towards the footman, and a superbly overwhelming silence towards the other under-servants.

He gave his opinion now on the Rome incident, when he had just touched upon the facts of the story; and it was, on the whole, a very fair and generous opinion. Young Master Val was only a boy yet, after all; Mr. Austin was a man; and boys could not be expected to do what men did. It was regrettable, of course, that such a call had been made upon Master Val; but the boy was not to be blamed by those who understood.

Then Mrs. Markham spoke. To her the prominent feature of the story was the murdering proclivity of Papists. Nothing else appeared to her of importance; she was unable to concentrate her mind upon the parts that the young gentlemen had played. For the whole story was just a confirmation of all that she had learned from her uncle who had been butler to an archdeacon. She referred to Guy Fawkes and the fires of Smithfield with an amazing bitterness.

Miss Ferguson was sure that it was all Mr. Austin's fault for leading Master Val into mischief. She was sure that it was only right that Mr. Austin should suffer for it. She was sure, a great number of times, of a great number of things that were not particularly to the point.

Then Mrs. Bentham announced her views. She was of the finest type of the finest servant in the world — the old nurse. She held, now, a rather nondescript position in the household, with two rooms of her own in a wing. She " mended " for everybody: she put things away very carefully in tissue-paper, and then forgot where she had put them. She was loved by the Medds one and all, who made her valuable presents on her birthday, and kissed her continually: she was respected by the upper servants and reverenced fearfully by the lower; for she had her dignities by sheer force of personality and of an uprightness whose besmirching was simply inconceivable.

The first article of her creed, or rather the first axiom of her philosophy, was that no Medd could ever do anything wrong or unworthy, except in such small matters as not " changing their feet " when they came in, or sitting up too late at night; and it was in accordance with this creed that she expounded her views. She was sorry that Mr. Austin had fought, but he knew best; there must have been some necessity. Master Val was quite right not to fight. Why should he fight? There remained the party whom she called " Them out there/' which included the Pope of Rome, the King of Italy, France, to which she had paid two visits with the

Family about twelve years before, and the vague mass of foreigners behind and beneath these three; and for " Them out there " she had not a word to say. Obviously they "were in the wrong," since they had come into conflict with the Medds. She would be glad when the young gentlemen were safe home again.

Then Mr. Simpson spoke, after a short pause.

Mr. Simpson, when off the stage, was extremely like a great many of his typical employers. He was sharp, disdainful, decided, and rather pitiless. Upstairs, of course, he was perfection; he was silent, capable, self-effacing, and extremely competent.

He summed up therefore, in a few biting sentences, the opinion which would be held on such behaviour by the majority of sensible, pitiless men of the world. Young Mr. Austin had only done the right thing under the circumstances; young Master Val?... Well! Mr. Simpson sneered unpleasantly.

Then Mrs. Bentham fell upon him. She announced that it was disgraceful to speak of the young gentlemen so. Master Val was all that Master Val should be. When Mr. Simpson had been a little longer with the Family he would know better than to speak like that. Mr. Simpson sat silent, twisting his sherry-glass, suffering a little indulgent smile to twitch his brown cheek from time to time. Miss Ferguson began to be sure again of a number of things.

Mr. Masterman broke in at last in a suitable pause. He said that the least said the soonest mended. After all, it was impossible to judge fairly on such slight information. Above all, no word must be spoken outside the " Room." The story must on no account get into the village.

He passed the sherry down to Mr. Simpson again and suggested a night-cap to Mrs, Bentham. Then he stood up: it was time to take the candles upstairs and set out the tray in the smoking-room.

(n)

Mrs. Bentham, after her night-cap — one single glass, ordered by the doctor — climbed upstairs and came into her sitting-room panting a little, both from the exertion and from the last ripples of indignation. It seemed to her disgraceful that a man who had been only three years in the Family should dare to talk so of her young gentlemen.

Her rooms, communicating by a passage and a baize door with the boys' wing, were one of the minor sights of the place, though in a purely intimate and personal way. From ceiling to floor the walls were covered with photographs and pictures — in the bedroom of persons, in the sitting-room of places. It was the Medd family, almost exclusively, whose representations hung in the minor-room — General Medd, from a daguerreotype of him as a subaltern, in a small brass frame, to a huge photograph of him as a general covered with orders, on a charger; Lady Beatrice in frocks and frills, in her drawing-dress, on horse-back with hounds about her; Val and Austin from baby clothes upwards; May in swings, May in sailor-costume holding a rope against a stormy sky — these and countless others plastered the walls. The sitting-room was less intimate but more splendid. Interiors of cathedrals in carved frames; views of Egypt and Exeter and Swansea and the Houses of Parliament; these disputed the walls with hanging bookcases containing pious literature, and huge presses filled with treasures and stuffs long since vanished for ever from the keeping of their owners. A large sewing-table stood in the midst, piled with stockings and linen, with a small tea-table beside it at which, on rare occasions, Mrs. Bentham would entertain to tea Miss May or Master Val. Mr. Austin had 'given up coming during the last year or two, though he always kissed her courteously and affectionately on leaving or arriving at Medhurst. There were two large easy chairs, subscribed for by the children; and the carpet had once covered the floor of Austin's room at Eton. Little precious things stood on the mantelpiece and on the tops of the bookcases — small inlaid boxes, spectacle-cases and scissors too grand to be used — gifts made her on the occasions of birthdays; and, in the drawers of the presses still other gifts reposed, too splendid even for exhibition — embroideries from Egypt, silver-mounted frames, and even a jade-handled umbrella, still in its outer case.

Mrs. Bentham — called Benty — was a worthy occupier of such glories. Her philosophy has already been described, and it extended even to the Supernatural. Heaven, so far as it represented itself imaginatively to her at all, consisted entirely in the eternal possession by her of those she loved - (and, indeed, it is difficult to construct a better picture) — The Medds and she would dwell together in a celestial group, crowned and palmed, no doubt, according to tradition, but together. She would entertain them to tea through all the aeons; and they would come and sit with her in her Mansion while she mended their haloes....

She had painful matters to think of now, more painful than she had dreamed of allowing downstairs; so she took her seat in one of the easy-chairs, and inspected a pair of socks through her spectacles; and meanwhile she began to think.

It was not, even now, that she allowed the possibility of Val's having been in the wrong, but it was a sore matter that anyone should think him to have been so. Far away at the outer doors of her consciousness hammered questions and doubts, while she sat within severe and determined, adoring the Family images with resolute faith. Master Val had done perfectly right, she told herself; he always did, except in such minor matters as have been mentioned. And Mr. Austin had done right too. The one had not fought when it was apparently his business to do so; the other had fought when it was not. And both were right.

So she sat and darned, bending her fine old sunken eyes over her work, her lips tightly compressed. She made a splendid and romantic figure here, in stern black, her shoulders covered by a lovely black knitted shawl, clasped at the throat by an enamelled brooch with the number of her birthdays on it in blue against gold. It had been the gift of Austin and Val and May to her last June.

She finished the sock at last — it was one of a basketful of Val's which she had collected before he went abroad — and, as she laid it by, heard the rustle of silk, the thud of a stick, and, as she rose to her feet, the voice she knew so well.

" May I come in, Benty? "

She made haste to push her footstool forward to the other chair as she called out in answer. Lady Beatrice limped in.

Her mistress came in sometimes like this, before going to bed, for a gentle gossip in the firelight. But she looked rather drawn and preoccupied this evening as she smiled at the old nurse whom she had known for twenty years, and she sat down without speaking. She leaned her stick against the wall and sat staring into the wood fire for a minute, without a word. Then she suddenly bent forward and took one of the old wrinkled hands into her own.

" We're in trouble, Benty," she said.

The old woman's face twitched and stiffened.

"It's... it's about Val," said the boy's mother.

For tactful discretion towards those whom she loved Benty was unrivalled. She knew perfectly well that nothing must be said about the conversation itself in the " Room." Indeed the conversation was not altogether right, but she had felt herself unable to check Masterman. But in any case it must not be mentioned now. The story had leaked out chiefly through Simpson's having been in the dining-room when he was supposed not to be there. Masterman also had heard the end of a conversation, and the facts, as has been said, had been put together with sufficient accuracy.

"What's the matter with him, my lady?" she asked, trying not to let her voice tremble.

" We... we're afraid he hasn't behaved well. He... he let Austin... run into danger instead of him. And... and I must tell you, Benty, because Austin's been hurt."

The old lady looked at her miserably. It was frightful to her that a Medd should accuse a Medd. How could both be right? And yet both must be. Lady Beatrice misunderstood the look. She tightened her hand-clasp a little.

" Don't look like that," she said. " Austin's not in danger now. He was wounded in the arm, in a duel which... which I'm afraid Val ought to have fought instead of him."

Benty looked suddenly defiant.

" How could that be, my lady? Master Val knew better than to fight a duel."

'' You don't understand, my dear "

" And him only a boy," burst in Benty resolutely. " How could anyone expect "

" Benty, you don't understand. Of course duels are very wrong. If they had both kept out of it, it would have been different; but it looks as if they had to fight, and "

" And Mr. Austin took Master Val's place. And quite right too. He's the elder. It's his place." The other was silent. It was balm to her to hear such pleading; it was what she had tried to say gently downstairs half an hour beforehand yet she had known it was disingenuous while she had said it. But it was pleasant to hear another say it too. She began to look into the fire again, and to stroke the old hand that lay between her own.

" Don't fret your mind, my dear," went on Benty, thoroughly roused by the perilous position she felt herself in, and beginning herself to pat back with her other hand. " Master Val's done nothing but what a young gentleman should, and so's Master Austin. If they will go out to these foreign parts they'll be bound to get into trouble, and what's more proper than that Master Austin should take the brunt of it." (Benty was proud of this phrase, even while she used it. ) " Master Val! why, he's only a boy. Don't you fret, my lady... there! there..." (for her mistress had suddenly bowed her head on the kind old hands.) " There! there. Sit up, my dear. It's time you were in bed."

For a minute or so the two sat in silence. Lady Beatrice had recovered herself almost instantly, and leaned back, with just the glimmer of tears still in her eyes, soothed and healed by the warm, familiar old presence, with its amazing charity and loyalty. She knew that Benty would never understand; that she would simply refuse to understand; and, after all, it was a pleasant and perhaps a wise philosophy — this refusal to judge, this fidelity to principles, this denial of facts which appeared to conflict with those principles. She half envied this creed of utter faith, and yet she thought it was not for her. She herself must deal with things in the world: it was not possible for her, she believed, to remain always in the atmosphere of this room, to live by faith, hope, and charity, and nothing else at all. She stood up painfully at last, helping herself by her stick on one side and Benty 's firm hands on the other.

' You're a dear," she said, and kissed her. " Now I must go to bed."

" Is the master much upset? " asked the old woman anxiously.

" Yes, he is," said Lady Beatrice.

(m)

Benty still pottered about uneasily for a few minutes, after she had seen her mistress to her room-door. She had promised to go in half an hour to " tuck her up." But she could not settle down again to the socks. She went through them indeed, ruthlessly, pressing her knuckles inside the foot of each to detect the better any incipient thinnesses; she counted them twice to see that the tale was correct. Then she wound up her gilt clock, a gift of the General. Then she went into her bedroom to see that the clothes were properly turned down. (It was the stated duty of a lower housemaid to do this for Mrs. Bentham every night, as well as to make the bed in the morning.) And then once more she sat down before the fire, with her old hands clasped.

There was a long frame above the mantelpiece, containing, as in a gallery, the photographs of General Medd, Lady Beatrice, Minnie, who had died in infancy, then Austin, then May, then Val; and lastly, by a peculiar privilege, the severe countenance of Miss Deverell. She looked up at this once or twice, and particularly at the two boys — Austin, aged sixteen, in a collar much too high for him, with a markedly intellectual brow, from which the hair had been, by the photographer's directions, carefully brushed backwards; and Val, aged thirteen, in an Eton suit, leaning on a balustrade, with Swiss mountains in the background.

And meanwhile Benty went through her little conflict once more.

The doubts and questions which, half an hour ago, had been merely battering at her outer gate, were now clamorous and articulate. That Simpson should " pass remarks " was one thing; that a Medd, and she the mother, should " pass " them was another. It was bitter to Benty that Lady Beatrice should, all unknowingly, have joined forces with a cynical manservant, who had no real reverence for the Family at all. So Benty fought desperately....

It is at once a gain and a loss to simple and uneducated people that they cannot, usually, stand outside and regard themselves. They have extraordinarily little power of self-criticism — even of self -observance. But it was pure gain to Benty now. She fought for her boy instinctively and quite unfairly; she seized every advantage, she dis-ingeniously rejected every suggestion on the other side. She insisted that Val was a boy; she refused to allow that he was becoming a man. She insisted that duels were wrong; she rejected the inevitable conclusion that Austin ought not to have fought (for she was determined to vindicate him, too, as well as Val; since both were Medds).

Benty's great word was " proper." It connoted a thousand shades and nuances; its fabric was established convention; but it was embroidered over with religion, and fine instinct, and violent, loveable prejudice; and before she could be satisfied, she must range everybody with Medd blood under its sanction. ' The master " must be right in being upset; " the mistress " in being distressed; Austin in fighting; Val in not fighting. And everybody else must be wrong, " Them out there," and Simpson, emphatically Simpson, down here.

Well; she won of course. Charity prevailed over just criticism. She stormed off her guns of disapprobation at the enemy; they were not doing or saying or thinking what was " proper," and she clasped all the Medds, one and all, to her heart. " My Family, right or wrong."

A great peace descended on Benty, and the enemy retired. Visions moved before her of the young gentlemen and Miss May coming home again. Everything would be all right then. Master Val would come and have tea with her; and she would tell him to take off his shoes and warm his feet on the high fender, as he liked to do. Charity would materialise itself and become finally victorious, in little kindly acts showered upon the wounded. They wrould be healed and made \vhole.

Before she went to " the mistress " she did an unusual thing; she leaned forward and gently kissed the photograph of the sulky looking boy who leaned on the balustrade in the presence of the Swiss mountains.

" Benty," said Lady Beatrice, regarding her over the edge of the bedclothes. " Were they — Masterman, I mean — saying anything about what I told you, in the ' Room '? "

Benty, with a stern face, was shaking out the stockings which Miss Ferguson had placed in a manner displeasing to her, and affected not to hear.

"Benty — were they?"

" Eh? my lady."

" Were they talking about it downstairs? "

" How should they be doing that? " demanded the old lady in sudden indignation. " Why you only told me this evening; and it isn't likely that I should "

" Then they weren't? " persisted the other, who had an uneasy sense of having seen Simpson just too late, while she and her husband were talking. Besides, it appeared that Benty herself had been strangely quick in understanding the situation just now.

Benty paused. Then with immense emphasis, she lied.

" No, my lady. And, if they did, I'd soon put a stopper on them."

Lady Beatrice sighed with relief and laid her head back.

" Kiss me, Benty," she said three minutes later, as the old nurse finished with the stockings, and said, " There! "