Mummers in Mufti/Chapter 11

This gaudy story and about half a column more of it, including a detailed chronicle of the Bellsmith family hurriedly lifted, almost verbatim, from "The Memorial History of Leicester County," Bellsmith was reading, propped up in bed, on the morning after Tommy Knight's birthday party. The bed was his own, and his bedroom showed so signs of disorder for, as "The Courier" had pointed out with an unerring sense of dramatic values, the only remarkable feature about the fire had been the Epicurean hilarity with which the news had been received by the principal sufferer. In the halls outside there still lingered faintly the unpleasant smell of charred wood doused with water while, even from where Bellsmith was sitting in bed, the walks at the edge of the lawn could be seen to be heavily blackened by soft coal cinders from the engines and the grass borders thoroughly trampled by the crowd.

Otherwise, inside and outside the house, the sights and sounds were exactly those which had been the familiar accompaniment of Bellsmith's awakenings for fifteen years. The November sun flickered wanly and fitfully over the few scant elm-trees inside the iron fence while, through the closed windows, came the usual sounds of a principal street in a bustling city. The steel shoes of truck-horses clattered monotonously and incessantly on the asphalt. Motor-cars passed in an unbroken stream with a steady grunting of horns, varied occasionally by a shrill, bird-like whistle. The street-cars clattered and whined, the trolley-pole of each one, apparently, always rattling off the wire at a junction point just in front of the house where two main avenues parted and where the wires formed a difficult Y. On a level with his own windows Bellsmith could see a gang of linemen in overalls, on a movable tower, cutting off limbs of a tree with long, preposterous saws and gigantic shears. Even this was a common sight, for the Bellsmith elms, the only ones left on Main Street, caused endless trouble to the city's complex system of wires.

All this Bellsmith was conscious of, rather than observing. His actual attention was riveted on the article in "The Courier," which William, the butler, had handed him without a word when he had rung his bell.

At the first startled sight of his own name in relentless and jeering type at the head of the column, Bellsmith had been struck by a cold, sinking feeling, as from a blow in the pit of the stomach,—a nausea which tingled down to his very toes. Even when he and the others in the private dining-room had realized that the news of the fire had been genuine, it had never occurred to any of them that their own replies would be taken seriously. Too much occupied with getting home, taking stock of the damage, and quieting the servants, that side of the affair had been one which had been wholly driven from Bellsmith's attention. When, as he finally got into bed, the birthday party, taken in connection with this later catastrophe, had recurred to his mind, he had merely thought of it—a little anxiously, to be sure—as something about which too much had better not be said. But now, this! How much more did "The Courier" know—and intend to tell?

Of course, in reality, the worldly young men at "The Courier" office had never for an instant taken Bellsmith's remarks seriously. That is to say—well! From their point of view, that was, in fact, the very "juice" of the "story." Bellsmith would never have gone to bed at all if he had known that, when a laughing reporter had outlined the telephone conversation, the night city editor had commanded: "Go to it! Eat it! Four-line head! Hold the presses if you have to, for the city edition."

In the days of Bellsmith Senior, no local paper would ever have dreamed of printing such a story, even if it had been far more convincing than it actually was, but the City of Leicester had grown beyond the oligarchy of the old families. "The Courier," in particular, was, if anything, out to swat the old families, especially if thereby the new families, represented by the foreign vote, would be pleased. Owned by "outside money," a syndicate in fact, "The Courier" was fighting the other papers for circulation and influence. Its imported editor was a misanthropic journalist of the metropolitan school (as it becomes metropolitan when it leaves New York), one of those newspaper men who feel it a duty, rather than otherwise, to hurt people's feelings. At any rate, he was a man who feared no one, least of all inactive Tories.

Yes, the head-lines were there all right, although, as usually happens in cases like this, something in Bellsmith kept crying out that they must be unreal—must be only one of those fantastic terrors which he was so constantly imagining for himself. Even now, after fifteen minutes, he kept his eyes glued to the letters, as if by mere staring he could make them grow dim. His hand convulsively twitched as if, with one sweep, it could wipe them away. He frantically felt that there must be some powerful effort of the will, some self-abasement perhaps, by which he could really undo his act of the evening before. He knew very keenly now how a murderer feels the morning after his finger has inadvertently pulled the trigger.

Yet, curiously enough, he felt no resentment toward "The Courier" or the morbid young men responsible for the story. As most people do, Bellsmith instinctively thought of a newspaper as inexorable fate and of its reporters as shadows rather than individuals. If he blamed any one he blamed himself, for that was Bellsmith's real overwhelming emotion at this unhappy moment—a genuine sense of personal guilt—with something of dirt about it. In that feeling he had begun his adventure, and in that feeling he certainly seemed destined to end it. In what is called the New England conscience there is a curious jumble of stern Mosaic morality, of petty commercial ethics, and of extreme personal fastidiousness. And probably the greatest of these is fastidiousness. Thus, like the Puritan of Puritans that he was, Arnold Bellsmith in no way connected his sense of guilt—perhaps contamination would be a better word—with Miss Marshall, with Tommy Knight, with the midnight punch, or even with his own violation of the Eighteenth Amendment. Those were all, in themselves, respectable enough. His sense of guilt somehow connected itself in his mind with that dirty alley leading to the stage-door and, in a lesser degree possibly, with the hard-faced girl, for neither of which was he in the least responsible. Just the same, the instinctive connection was there as he might have known that it would be. If he had never seen either the alley or the girl this would never have happened.

But all this was later. These were the second thoughts of his reaction. Bellsmith's first act had been to look up from the head-lines to William, to observe his expression; but William at the moment had been deeply and ostentatiously busy with the window-shades and had left the room without even turning his face toward the bed. William had, in fact, for this occasion, put on his butler air par excellence—one might almost have said his illness-in-the-family expression.

William had now departed some time before. Bellsmith had read the article through, word by word and letter by letter, and had begun to read it a second time when there came a knock at his door. Trained as his ear was to every sound and every gradation of sound that made up his household routine, Bellsmith instantly noted something distinctly unfamiliar about the knock, and, as every trifle had always been prodigious to him, he at once began to speculate wildly about it. Then, supposing that William's knock might naturally be a little timid under the circumstances, he straightened up in bed with an assumed hearty air and called out, "Come in, William."

"It ain't William," replied a stern, rasping voice which was strangely familiar and yet unfamiliar. Bellsmith hesitated, his hand instinctively reaching for the bell to call William to put himself between him and the world. Then realizing that the strange voice could not have reached his bedroom door without William's cognizance, if not his consent, he answered, a little uneasily, "Who is it?"

"It's me," replied the voice. "It's us. We 're coming in."

"Oh, yes, Margaret," answered Bellsmith, straightening the bedclothes. "Yes, indeed, Margaret, come right in."

His heartiness was now genuine, but something told him that it was ill-timed; for immediately the door was slammed open and, to his utter amazement, what was apparently the entire cast of "Way Down East" streamed into the room. For a moment it occurred to him that his companions of the night before must have chosen this highly mistaken moment to carry on the revels and salute him with a burlesque consolation party. It took even Bellsmith a moment to realize that the four persons who entered in line and almost in lock-step were none but his own old and familiar servants—in their street clothes. Bellsmith had never seen such a sight in his life as that group which marched in and lined' up at the foot of his bed. At its head was a heavy and dowdy woman whom, even now, he could hardly recognize as Margaret, his old family cook. Margaret, to him, had always been a crotchety but highly respectable figure which had moved heavily, in blue gingham, between the bricked-in range in the basement kitchen and the dumb-waiter. She now stood before him a figure which could have walked on in vaudeville and brought down the house. She was wearing, principally, a long, black plush cape, imitating sealskin and heavily beaded, above which appeared the fierce, red, intolerant face of a woman who knew her rights and intended to get them. Surrounding her face, her coarse, straggly, gray hair came out in defiant wisps from under a jaunty black hat on which a jet ornament nodded incessantly. Margaret had probably never taken a drink in her life, but, in that get-up she could never, by any chance, look completely sober.

Next to Margaret stood what was apparently a chorus girl, rather worse than those Bellsmith had seen the previous evening—a study in cheap furs, soiled lace, and brass jewelry. It proved to be Hecta, the laundress, dressed for the public eye, but, next to her, was the real surprise of the whole performance.

On Hecta's left stood a slender, demure, and remarkably aristocratic young woman who, in every detail of subdued refinement, might have been a young teacher from a quiet boarding-school, or might have just stepped from any electric brougham for a morning's shopping at the Woman's Exchange. A simple, perfectly tailored suit was daintily set off by an Eton collar and tiny starched cuffs. A plain sailor-hat matched exactly the suit, as did the rough-stitched English walking-gloves which its owner was wearing. A slender, rolled-up umbrella added the last detail of perfection. It really made Bellsmith embarrassed to see such a figure in his bedroom, although his slowly awakening consciousness was now vaguely able to recognize the young woman as merely Annie, the house-maid.

At the very end of the line stood the strangest figure of all, the last comic touch. It was William, William clothed in the final word of cockney elegance—a light tan top-coat with big pearl buttons, a purple collar, a lavender tie, and carrying a light brown derby hat under his arm.

Small wonder that Bellsmith, at sight of that troupe, at the foot of his big mahogany bed, could not even laugh, could do nothing but draw his knees up under the sheets and stare.

"We 're leaving. All of us. Now!" announced Margaret, as the spokesman and also, apparently, as the chaperon.

"So I see," said Bellsmith, vaguely; and the tenseness—the pathos, rather—of the moment was shown by the fact that no one laughed, not even he.

Having laid down their ultimatum, the servants merely stood and waited. Possibly, to their angry eyes, this twitchy, embarrassed man, under the embroidered covers, appeared as ridiculous as they did to his. But through Bellsmith's mind was passing a curious detached train of thought. His habitual mind kept telling him that here was a perfectly terrible state of affairs. His more natural mind, newly awakened, kept telling him that he did n't care an atom. There, again, was the New England conscience of it. This revolt did n't really alarm him in the least, but another side of his mind kept telling him that it ought to alarm him fearfully. What had happened that it no longer did? Was it the fact that "The Morning Courier" had supplied a disaster so numbing that all other disasters seemed trifling, negligible; or was it a sudden revealing memory of that sociable moment with the night clerk at the Massapauk, buying cigars, and the novel, amazing realization of how many sociable night clerks, how many friendly Massapauks, and how many good cigars there would still be left in the world, no matter whether all the servants in the house left at once? For months at a time Bellsmith had lived on tiptoes and in terror of just such a moment as this. A single ripple in the smooth currents of his household had always been one of those very things which, as he had so painfully described to the doctor, had given him whole hours of gloom. The very suggestion of the word "leaving" in connection with one of his servants had been sufficient to make him virtually ill. To his servants' whims he had yielded inch by inch as he had to his own, until their duties, like his, had been narrowed down to the lowest point of mere routine, to say nothing of efficiency. The house-maid and the laundress did whatever they pleased—so long as they left him alone. The cook was ill with imaginary diseases half of the time and nursing a grievance the rest. At least, that had been the report which Bellsmith had received through his successive butlers, for he had always been willing to go to any lengths of concession rather than face her himself. Only William had really worked capably, and it had not been his master but his own English training that had compelled him to do that. If any one had once suggested to William that all butlers did not work all the time he would have stopped. That idea merely had not occurred to him: that was all. Yet, bad as the servants had always been, Bellsmith had lived daily in a nervous dread lest one of them should "give notice"; had monthly lightened their duties and daily placated their whims.

And now, to have them all leave at once, and at a time when events had made him more dependent than ever on the sanctuary of his own home! In one vivid picture Bellsmith saw the disordered kitchen down-stairs with the fire going out and a loaf of stale bread on the table. He would have to send for plumbers and people to turn off the water and wander around in that maze of pipes known as the cellar. He saw beds unmade and halls undusted, furnace untended, linen unwashed, and, most of all, he visioned the sound of the door-bell pealing through the great vacant house with no faithful William to answer, to interpose his misleading face to the unwanted visitors who would be certain to come.

But it was no, no use, no use at all. Try as he would, Bellsmith could not get up any excitement about it. Possibly for the first time he realized how completely, since the evening before, his real interests had now gone elsewhere.

"We want our money!" demanded Margaret, to bring the matter to a head.

"All right," said Bellsmith casually.

In fact he said it so casually that it was like a dash of cold water over the group at the foot of the bed. Annie and Hecta looked at each other uncertainly. It made Bellsmith feel as if he had said something indelicate, something for which he should apologize. Instinctively he tried to smooth it over.

"You shall have your money whenever you wish it," he added, "but please tell me what is the matter."

Margaret had apparently been waiting for just that question.

"Matter indeed!" she shrieked convulsively, throwing back her head like an empress and, quite innocently, looking a little more drunk than ever. "'What's the matter,' he asks, and he lying there in the sheets. 'What's the matter?' he asks, and we being burned in our beds while he runs all over town shouting, 'To hell with them! Let them burn!'"

"Oh!" gasped Bellsmith, suddenly enlightened. Then it was not an economic issue but a moral one.

"Oh, yes, it's all very well for you to say, 'Oh,'" sneered Margaret, "but what did you say when we was all being toasted alive and every one of us with respectable families to read it out the first thing in the papers? Will I dare show my face again at St. Anthony's Church? Me living in a house like this and us being burned in our beds?"

Her delight in the grandeur of the phrase was so evident that even Bellsmith could not help smiling

"But, Margaret," he remonstrated, "you were n't burned alive in your beds. And I did n't set the fire." "Oh, no, you did n't set the fire," shrieked Margaret, who had evidently been whipping herself to this state for hours. "But you did n't care if it was set and all of us burned in our beds."

There was apparently some tremendous moral distinction between the disgrace of being burned in bed and being burned standing up. Even Bellsmith began to grasp it. It was, after all, a picturesque figure, and he could really begin to see the curious, distorted sensation it gave the servants of being found in a house of social putrefaction with the walls torn off by "The Courier" and left naked to the public eye.

Slowly Bellsmith began to realize what had been going on in the kitchen the night before and this morning—the really heartless and scorching light with which that ridiculous newspaper story had struck upon four simple minds all trained in a traditional reverence for the printed page. He could see the gigglings, the screamings, the excited conferences in the kitchen fanned up by the violent Margaret until they had ended in this dramatic revolt. With the touchy dignity of typical servants, to whom nothing is dearer than dignity, they had taken the only course that seemed open to them and their honor. His servants had no real desire to leave. Their dignity merely wanted petting. They wanted their standing reassured. They were, in effect, a committee of the whole house. They wanted a retraction, something from headquarters, that they could carry to their constituents, over tea-cups and in the vestibule of St. Anthony's Church.

Retract, only deny that he had sent that message, apologize, and all would be well. Retract! But with that idea surged up a sudden and curious obstinacy in Bellsmith's mind, an obstinacy which he had never known before in his life, an obstinacy attributable to no known cause, not even to the New England conscience, an obstinancy attributable, probably, only to the fact that he was a Bellsmith—not Bellsmith but a Bellsmith. Placate, yes, but retract, no! He was damned if he would! Now that the idea came up, he was damned if he would retract to any one!

"Now, Margaret," he began calmly, "it seems to me that we can talk this thing out—" he almost was tempted to say "man to bell-boy," but smiled and finished with—"calmly."

The bold face of Margaret flashed up with defiance but, at his firm front, Hecta suddenly giggled nervously, William looked deferentially anxious, while Annie, blushing violently, looked at the floor. Yet none of them spoke

"To begin with," continued Bellsmith, "if you all really want to go I don't suppose I can stop you. If you must, you must. In that case I shall merely close the house and go to the Mas—to one of the hotels."

Four faces before him grew very long. It was really more than Bellsmith could stand, and accordingly he added, "But of course I should hate to lose you." The four faces brightened, and he continued. There were, after all, certain things one said at a time like this.

"Now, in all the time you have been here, have I ever given any one of you one single cause for complaint?"

He paused, looked up at them and waited. Hecta began to sniffle, the first to weaken.

"No, sir," she choked.

With growing confidence Bellsmith looked next at Annie, but Annie was still fiery red and her eyes were averted. William was non-committal, and Bellsmith did not dare look at Margaret. At the others, however, he grinned with an abandon which he could not even try to explain.

"In other words," he said, "is n't it the truth that there is n't an easier place to work in town and that all of you know it? I 've no objection, understand, but is n't it?"

Margaret opened her lips again in defiance, but Bellsmith caught her eye.

"Just a minute, Margaret," he commanded firmly, and, to his amazement, Margaret obeyed him.

This was beyond expectation. Even Margaret was impressed. From the four strained faces before him Bellsmith suddenly grasped the fact that these four persons were actually taking his gruffness at its face value. They believed it was real! But it was physically impossible for Bellsmith to be grim for more than a minute or two at a time.

"On the other hand," he continued, more naturally, "I have to admit that you all have been faithful and honest, that you have all made things very agreeable for me. I have appreciated it and should be sorry to see you go. If you have misunderstood anything that I have

"No, damn it!" he suddenly affirmed to himself. "I will not retract—for the servants or any one else."

He paused rather vaguely, not knowing what to do, but, briefly as he had kept his control of himself, it had been a minute longer than the others had been able to do it. The strain had been too great, and the tension had suddenly snapped. Hecta began to sob openly, and her breakdown had its effect on the other women. Even Margaret began to look dazed. Annie's hand was trembling visibly as it grasped the top of the slender umbrella, and William was wetting his lips. It was so upsetting to Bellsmith that he became actually brusque from sheer confusion.

"Has any one of you any real cause for complaint?" he repeated sharply.

At the end of the line, William cleared his throat painfully.

"Nao, sir, Mr. Bellsmith. Hi'm sure we 'ev hall bean pairfeckly 'appy."

It was not once in a year that William deliberately fell back into cockney. It was not a slip with him, it was a pose; and when William fell back into cockney Bellsmith knew that he was getting sentimental. William somehow had the idea that it pleased his American masters to have him talk cockney. It was a pitiful overture, but Bellsmith knew that it was at least an overture. He felt himself weakening but checked the impulse

"Here! This will never do," he commanded himself and hitched more erect than ever on the pillows.

"Well," he said quietly, "what do you intend to do?"

Fearfully, within, he looked up at the line, but not a hand stirred. A pin could have been heard to drop; then suddenly Hecta's sobs grew into wild, uncontrollable weeping. Thoroughly uncomfortable, Bellsmith looked from her to Annie and saw two tears creeping out from under her long, drooping lashes. Then suddenly, to his utter amazement, Margaret herself broke into huge, animal whoops. Great tears began to stream over her coarse, red cheeks, while at the end of the line, even William was breathing audibly. And slowly over himself Bellsmith felt creeping a huge affection for these absurd, ignorant people of his who were really so dependent on his laugh or his frown. But he knew that he must not give way to it, that he must check himself before the scene became grotesque beyond limits. In a minute more the five of them would have been sobbing together.

For a long moment there was another tense and dramatic silence broken only by the sobbing of the women; then William turned to the door. He passed out into the hall and, suddenly realizing that they were alone in their master's bedroom, the three women turned in a panic and fled.

Bellsmith lay back on the pillows, and a look of slow wonder came over his face. For a minute he heard sobbing and then a sibilant, whispered conference down in the hall below. Silence fell and endured for twenty minutes, while Bellsmith lay there in tense anxiety.

Then slowly the normal sounds of life began to awaken and resound through the silent house. Far off in the kitchen a poker could be heard rattling cheerfully against the grates of the stove. A basket of silver was tossed out upon the dining-room table and sorted and counted. The firm, even steps of William passed through the lower hall to the door, to take in the mail. In the upper hall a vacuum-cleaner began to hum, and Bellsmith, with a sudden guilty recollection, realized that the delicate hand of Annie was running it. He wondered why he had never noticed before how dainty and refined she was. And, with that thought, for the first time that morning—really for the first time, considering the fire—came a picture of another girl, excitingly feminine, facing him over a café table and in the darkened hall of a shabby hotel.

…, as the novelists say.

Softly William knocked at the door, then came in without a sign that a thing had happened.

"Your breakfast, Mr. Bellsmith?" he asked. "What would you care to have?"

"Oh, bless me, William," sighed Bellsmith, "the doctor has given me orders to change all my habits. I am dying for half a grape-fruit, two pieces of toast, and some coffee. I suppose that that means that I ought to order tomato soup."

"Very good, sir," said William, without a smile, but Bellsmith called him back, laughing.

"Here, William! I was only joking. Bring up the grape-fruit as usual."