The Professional Prince/Chapter 10

With the proper feminine adaptability, Agatha Stuart had settled comfortably down at the house in Half Moon Street and found her life there uncommonly pleasant.

She was wholly her own mistress, free to come and go as she liked. Her meals were served in her own sitting room. Her brother was never present at one of them. Indeed, she did not even see him for days together.

She did not lunch or dine with the Earl of Bastable or other admirers as often as she had been used. She preferred to take her meals at home, and she was surprised at the preference. She did not dream of admitting to herself that the fact that James Bletsoe frequently waited on her was the reason for it.

But that was the fact of the matter. He had awakened her interest and her womanly curiosity. His fine face, set in its expressionless, imperturbable mask, intrigued her; she desired with a growing keenness to know what lay behind that mask; she was beginning to desire to see that set imperturbability break into the liveliest and, if possible, most anxious interest in her. There was, however, to all seeming, no likelihood of her ever obtaining her desire.

It was a further vexation that, though he always addressed her as “madam,” she could not bring herself to call him “Bletsoe.” She had to call him “Mr. Bletsoe.”

One morning she learned at breakfast that Henry Cleveland was about to enjoy a day's holiday. She pondered the fact for about twenty minutes before she decided not to lunch at Prince's with the Earl of Bastable, as had been arranged, but to stay at home. She came to lunch in a somewhat pleasant expectancy, to find, as she had hoped, that Bletsoe was waiting on her.

She took her soup in silence, but when he had set the red mullet before her, she asked, in a carefully indifferent tone:

“Are you always going to be a butler, Mr. Bletsoe?”

“No, madam,” replied Bletsoe, in a tone of civil indifference to her faint interest in him, and he gazed thoughtfully through her at the wall behind her.

“What are you going to do?” she persisted.

“I propose to become an art dealer, madam,” said Bletsoe, without removing his eyes from the wall behind her.

She restrained herself from looking around to see what he was gazing at so earnestly.

“And keep a shop?” she asked.

For a moment he looked at her with an air of patient indulgence that was somewhat irritating. Then he said:

“No, madam. I shall never keep a shop.”

“But how will you get customers?”

“I have already found a good many patrons who rely on my taste and buy on my recommendation, madam. Some day I may rise to having an art gallery, as they call it, of my own.”

“Then are you really an art dealer already?”

“A private art dealer—yes, madam.”

“Then is that why you don't wear livery? Or is it that Mr. Stuart does not care to go to the expense of buying liveries?”

“I go with the house, madam. And in this house no one wears livery.”

She paused; then she said in a faintly complaining tone:

“It makes it difficult to bear in mind always that you're a butler.”

“That's unfortunate, madam. But I fear it cannot be helped. My employer would not hear of my wearing livery.”

“It's a menial position. It's not a position for a man,” she said with some severity.

“It depends on the man, madam,” he returned suavely.

“Being at every one's beck and call!” she went on somewhat contemptuously.

“Everybody who isn't rich has to be at somebody's beck and call, madam. That's what I am paid for. I think that I have always maintained my independence, really. Indeed, I have gone so far as to thrash one of my employers who did not respect it.”

“You did?” she asked quickly, and if he had been looking at her and not through her, he would have seen that her eyes were admiring. Then she added: “Still, I'm sure it isn't the proper position for a man.”

“It is really a very good position for a man with the brains to make use of it, madam. The only other position open to me, when I chose my career, was that of assistant master at a preparatory school. There I should have had an immense amount of work I dislike among people I dislike more than the work, and food I dislike, and in the country I dislike, and about the same pay. I preferred to be a butler.”

She studied him with a doubtful, dissatisfied air. Suddenly he looked at her and smiled.

“You see, madam,” he said, “any of my friends who dislike butlers can regard me as an art dealer.”

There can be no reason why a rising young musical comedian should blush when an art dealer smiles at her. But that was what Agatha did, and disliked herself for doing it.