"Nao!"
The strong cockney negative was also an exclamation. It came from Mrs.
Courage, the cook-housekeeper, who stood near the kitchen range making
the coffee for breakfast. She was a woman who looked her name, born
not merely to do battle, but to enjoy being in the midst of it.
Jane, the waitress, was the next to speak. "Nettie Duckett, you ought
to be ashymed to sye them words, you that's been taught to 'ope the
best of everyone."
Jane had fluttered in from the pantry with the covered dish for the
toast. Jane still fluttered at her work, as she had done for the past
thirty years. The late Mrs. Allerton had liked her about the table
because she was swift, deft, and moved lightly. A thin little woman,
with a profile resembling that of Punch's Judy, and a smile of
cheerful piety, she yielded to time only by a process of drying up.
Nettie Duckett was quick in her own defense, but breathless, too, from
girlish laughter. "I can't 'elp syin' what I see, now can I? There she
was 'arf dressed in the little back spare-room. Oh, the commonest
thing! You wouldn't 'a wanted to sweep 'er out with a broom."
"Pretty goin's on I must sye," Jane commented. "'Ope the best of
everyone I will, but when you think that we was all on the top
floor----"
"Pretty goin's off there'll be, I can tell you that," Mrs. Courage
declared in her rich, decided bass. "Just let me 'ave a word with
Master Rashleigh. I'll tell 'im what 'is ma would 'ave said. She left
'im to me, she did. 'Courage,' she's told me many a time, 'that boy'll
be your boy after I'm gone.' As good as mykin' a will, I call it. And
now to think that with us right 'ere in the 'ouse.... Where's Steptoe?
Do 'e know anything about it?"
"Do 'e know anything about what?" The question came from Steptoe
himself, who appeared on the threshold.
The three women maintained a dramatic silence, while the old
butler-valet looked from one to another.
"Seems as if there was news," he observed dryly.
"Tell 'im, Nettie," Mrs. Courage commanded.
Nettie was the young thing of the establishment, Mrs. Courage's own
niece, brought from England when the housemaid's place fell vacant on
Bessie's unexpected marriage to Walter Wildgoose, Miss Walbrook's
indoor man. Indeed she had been brought from England before Bessie's
marriage, of which Mrs. Courage had had advance information, so that
as soon as Bessie left, Nettie was on the spot to be smuggled into the
Allerton household. Steptoe had not forgiven this underhand movement
on Mrs. Courage's part, seeing that in the long-ago both she and Jane
had been his own nominees, and that he considered the household posts
as gifts at his disposal. "I'll 'ave to make a clean sweep o' the lot
o' them," he had more than once declared at those gatherings at which
the English butlers and valets of upper Fifth Avenue discuss their
complex of interests. Forty years in the Allerton family had made him
not merely its major-domo but in certain respects its head. His tone
toward Nettie was that of authority with a note of disapprobation.
"Speak, girl, and do it without giggling. What 'ave you to tell?"
Though she couldn't do it without giggling Nettie repeated the story
she had given to her aunt and Jane. She had gone into the small single
back bedroom on the floor below Mr. Allerton's, and there was a
half-dressed girl 'a-puttin' up of 'er 'air.' According to her own
statement Nettie had passed away on the spot, being able, however, to
articulate the question, "What are you a'doin' of 'ere?" To this the
young woman had replied that Mr. Allerton had brought her in on the
previous evening, telling her to sleep there, and there she had slept.
Nettie's information could go no further, but it was considered to go
far enough.
"So what do you sye to _that_?" Mrs. Courage demanded of Steptoe; "you
that's always so ready to defend my young lord?"
Steptoe was prepared to stand back to back with his employer. "I don't
defend 'im. I'm not called on to defend 'im. It's Mr. Rashleigh's
'ouse. Any guest of 'is must be your guest and mine."
"And what about Miss Walbrook, 'er that's to be missus 'ere in the
course of a few weeks?"
Steptoe colored, frostily. "She's not missus 'ere yet; and if she ever
comes, there'll be stormy weather for all of us. New missuses don't
generally get on with old servants like us--that's been in the family
for so many years--but when they don't, it ain't them as gets
notice."
A bell rang sharply. Steptoe sprang to attention.
"There's Mr. Rashleigh now. Don't you women go to mykin' a to-do.
There's lots o' troubles that 'ud never 'ave 'appened if women 'ad
been able to 'old their tongues."
"But I suppose, Steptoe, you don't deny that there's such a thing as
right."
"I don't deny that there's such a thing as right, Mrs. Courage, but I
only wonder if you knows more about it than the rest of us."
In Allerton's room Steptoe found the young master of the house half
dressed. Standing before a mirror, he was brushing his hair. His face
and eyes, the reflection of which Steptoe caught in the glass, were
like those of a man on the edge of going insane.
The old valet entered according to his daily habit and without
betraying the knowledge of anything unusual. All the same his heart
was sinking, as old hearts sink when beloved young ones are in
trouble. The boy was his darling. He had been with his father for ten
years before the lad was born, and had watched his growth with a more
than paternal devotion. "'E's all I 'ave," he often said to himself,
and had been known to let out the fact in the afore-mentioned group of
English upper servants, a small but exclusive circle in the multiplex
life of New York.
In Steptoe's opinion Master Rash had never had a chance. Born many
years after his parents had lived together childlessly, he had come
into the world constitutionally neurasthenic. Steptoe had never known
a boy who needed more to be nursed along and coaxed along by
affection, and now and then by indulgence. Instead, the system of
severity had been applied with results little short of calamitous. He
had been sent to schools famous for religion and discipline, from
which he reacted in the first weeks of freedom in college, getting
into dire academic scrapes. Further severity had led to further
scrapes, and further scrapes to something like disgrace, when the war
broke out and a Red Cross job had kept him from going to the bad. The
mother had been a self-willed and selfish woman, claiming more from
her son than she ever gave him, and never perceiving that his was a
nature requiring a peculiar kind of care. After her death Steptoe had
prayed for a kind, sweet wife to come to the boy's rescue, and the
answer had been Miss Barbara Walbrook.
When the engagement was announced, Steptoe had given up hope. Of Miss
Walbrook as a woman he had nothing to complain. Walter Wildgoose
reported her a noble creature, splendid, generous, magnificent, only
needing a strong hand. She was of the type not to be served but to be
mastered. Rashleigh Allerton would goad her to frenzy, and she would
do the same by him. She was already doing it. For weeks past Steptoe
could see it plainly enough, and what would happen after they were
married God alone knew. For himself he saw no future but to hang on
after the wedding as long as the new mistress of the house would allow
him, take his dismissal as an inevitable thing, and sneak away and
die.
It was part of Steptoe's training not to notice anything till his
attention was called to it. So having said his "Good-morning, sir," he
went to the closet, took down the hanger with the coat and waistcoat
belonging to the suit of which he saw that Allerton had put on the
trousers, and waited till the young man was ready for his
ministrations.
Allerton was still brushing his hair, as he said over his shoulder:
"There's a young woman in the house, Steptoe. Been here all night."
"Yes, sir; I know--in the little back spare-room."
"Who told you?"
"Nettie went in for a pincushion, Mr. Rash, and the young woman was
a-doin' of 'er 'air."
"What did Nettie say?"
"It ain't what Nettie says, sir, if I may myke so bold. It's what Mrs.
Courage and Jane says."
"Tell Mrs. Courage and Jane they needn't be alarmed. The young woman
is--" Steptoe caught the spasm which contracted the boy's face--"the
young woman is--my wife."
"Quite so, sir."
If Allerton went no further, Steptoe could go no further; but inwardly
he was like a man reprieved at the last minute, and against all hope,
from sentence of death. "Then it won't be '_er_," was all he could say
to himself, "'er" being Barbara Walbrook. Whatever calamity had
happened, that calamity at least would be escaped, which was so much
to the good.
His arms trembled so that he could hardly hold up the waistcoat for
Allerton to slip it on. But he didn't slip it on. Instead he wheeled
round from the mirror, threw the brushes with a crash to the toilet
table, and cried with a rage all the more raging for being impotent:
"Steptoe, I've been every kind of fool."
"Yes, sir, I expect so."
"You've got to get me out of it, Steptoe. You must find a way to save
me."
"I'll do my best, sir." The joy of cooperation with the lad almost
made up for the anguish at his anguish. "What 'ud it be--you must
excuse me, Mr. Rash--but what 'ud it be that you'd like me to save you
from?"
Allerton threw out his arms. "From this crazy marriage. This frightful
mix-up. I went right off the handle yesterday. I was an infernal
idiot. And now I'm in for it. Something's got to be done, Steptoe, and
I can't think of any one but you to do it."
"Quite so, sir. Will you 'ave your wystcoat on now, sir? You're ready
for it, I see. I'll think it over, Mr. Rash, and let you know."
While first the waistcoat and then the coat were extended and slipped
over the shoulders, Allerton did his best to put Steptoe in possession
of the mad facts of the previous day. Though the account he gave was
incoherent, the old man understood enough.
"It wasn't her fault, you must understand," Allerton explained
further, as Steptoe brushed his hat. "She didn't want to. I persuaded
her. I wanted to do something that would wring Miss Walbrook's
heart--and I've done it! Wrung my own, too! What's to become of me,
Steptoe? Is the best thing I can do to shoot myself? Think it over.
I'm ready to. I'm not sure that it wouldn't be a relief to get out of
this rotten life. I'm all on edge. I could jump out of that window as
easily as not. But it wasn't the girl's fault. She's a poor little
waif of a thing. You must look after her and keep me from seeing her
again, but she's not bad--only--only--Oh, my God! my God!"
He covered his face with his hands and rocked himself about, so that
Steptoe was obliged to go on brushing till his master calmed himself.
"Do you think, sir," he said then, "that this is the 'at to go with
this 'ere suit? I think as the brown one would be a lot chicker--tone
in with the sort of fawn stripe in the blue like, and ketch the note
in your tie." He added, while diving into the closet in search of the
brown hat and bringing it out, "There's one thing I could say right
now, Mr. Rash, and I think it might 'elp."
"What is it?"
"Do you remember the time when you 'urt your leg 'unting down in Long
Island?"
"Yes; what about it?"
"You was all for not payin' it no attention and for 'oppin' about as
if you 'adn't 'urt it at all. A terr'ble fuss you myde when the doctor
said as you was to keep still. Anybody 'ud 'ave thought 'e'd bordered
a hamputation. And yet it was keepin' still what got you out o' the
trouble, now wasn't it?"
"Well?"
"Well, now you're in a worse trouble still it might do the syme again.
I'm a great believer in keepin' still, I am."
Allerton was off again. "How in thunder am I to keep still when----?"
"I'll tell you one wye, sir. Don't talk. Don't _do_ nothink. Don't
beat your 'ead against the wall. Be quiet. Tyke it natural. You've
done this thing. Well, you 'aven't committed a murder. You 'aven't
even done a wrong to the young lydy to whom you was engyged. By what I
understand she'd jilted you, and you was free to marry any one you
took a mind to."
"Nominally, perhaps, but----"
"If you're nominally free, sir, you're free, by what I can understand;
and if you've gone and done a foolish thing it ain't no one's business
but your own."
"Yes, but I can't stand it!"
"O' course you can't stand it, sir, but it's because you can't stand
it that I'm arskin' of you to keep just as quiet as you can. Mistykes
in our life is often like the twists we'll give to our bodies. They'll
ache most awful, but let nyture alone and she'll tyke care of 'em.
It's jest so with our mistykes. Let life alone and she'll put 'em
stryght for us, nine times out o' ten, better than we can do it by
workin' up into a wax."
Calmed to some extent Allerton went off to the club for breakfast,
being unable to face this meal at home. Steptoe tidied up the room. He
was troubled and yet relieved. It was a desperate case, but he had
always found that in desperate cases desperate remedies were close at
hand.