“MR. LITTIMER,”
and the owner walked in after it. Or, rather, glided softly in, shutting
the door after entry as delicately as though the inmates had just fallen
into a sweet sleep on which their life depended. Mr. Littimer was an
old-fashioned looking man, with mutton-chop whiskers, a “stock,” tied in
a large bow, a long frock-coat, and tight trousers—the whole suggesting
nothing of recent or even modern date, but, say, 1850. It was an
appearance of intense respectability, of super-respectability, of that
1850 respectability which was so infinitely more respectable than any
respectability of our own day. Mr. Crichton stared, as well he might, and
washed his hands with invisible soap. Though, in fact, now middle-aged,
he felt in this man’s presence extremely young. He clean forgot that he
had been a King in Babylon. Indeed, for the first time in his life he,
the consummate, the magisterial, the admirable Crichton, felt almost
green.
“Mr. Crichton, sir,” said the visitor, with an apologetic inclination
of the head, “I have ventured to take the great liberty of calling upon
you, if you please, sir, and,” he added with another inclination of
the head to Mrs. Crichton (who felt what she would herself have called
flabbergasted), “if _you_ please, ma’am, as an old friend of your worthy
father. He was butler at Mrs. Steerforth’s when I valeted poor Mr.
James.” His eye fell, respectably, on Mr. Crichton’s port. “Ah!” he said,
“_his_ wine was Madeira, but——” A second glass of port was thereupon
placed on the table, and he sipped it respectably.
Mr. Crichton could only stare, speechless. All his _aplomb_ had gone. He
gazed at a ship’s bucket, his most cherished island relic, which hung
from the ceiling (as a shade for the electric light—one of his little
mechanical ingenuities), and wondered whether he ever _could_ have put
anybody’s head in it. His philosophy was, for once, at fault. He knew,
none better, that “nature” had made us all unequal, dividing us up into
earls and butlers and tweenies, but now for the first time it dawned upon
him that “nature” had made us unequally respectable. Here was something
more respectable, vastly more respectable, than himself; respectable not
in the grand but in the sublime manner.
He could not guess his visitor’s thoughts, and it was well for his peace
of mind that he could not. For Mr. Littimer’s thoughts were, respectably,
paternal. He thought of Mr. Crichton, sen., and still more of the senior
Mrs. Crichton, once “own woman” to Mrs. Steerforth. Ah! those old days
and those old loves! How sad and bad and mad it was—for Mr. Littimer’s
poet was Browning, as his host’s was Henley, as suited the difference
in their dates—and how they had deceived old Crichton between them! So
this was _his_ boy, his, Littimer’s, though no one knew it save himself
and the dead woman! And as he gazed, with respectable fondness, at this
image, modernized, modified, subdued, of his own respectability, he
reflected that there was something in heredity, after all. And he smiled,
respectably, as he remembered his boy’s opinion that the union of butler
and lady’s maid was perhaps the happiest of all combinations. Perhaps,
yes; but without any perhaps, if the combination included the valet.
Unhappy, on the other hand, were those combinations from which valets
were pointedly excluded. There was that outrageous young person whom Mr.
James left behind at Naples and who turned upon him, the respectable
Littimer, like a fury, when he was prepared to overlook her past in
honourable marriage.
His meditations were interrupted by Mrs. Crichton, who had been mentally
piecing together her recollections of “David Copperfield”—her Guv. had
given her a Dickens course—and had now arrived at a conclusion. “Axin’
yer pardon, mister,” she said (being still, as we have stated, a little
vulgar when excited), “but if you was valet to Mr. James Steerforth,
you’re the man as ’elped ’im to ruin that pore gal, and as afterwards
went to quod for stealin’. I blushes”—here her eye fell on the Guv., who
quietly dropped the correction “blush”—“I _blush_ for yer, Mr. Littimer.”
“Ah, ma’am,” Mr. Littimer respectably apologized, “I attribute my past
follies entirely to having lived a thoughtless life in the service
of young men; and to having allowed myself to be led by them into
weaknesses, which I had not the strength to resist.”
“And that, I venture to suggest, ma’am,” he respectably continued, “is
why your worthy husband has been so much more fortunate in the world
than myself. We are both respectable, if I may say so, patterns of
respectability” (Crichton coloured with gratification at this compliment
from the Master), “and yet our respectability has brought us very
different fates. And why, if you please, ma’am? Because I have served the
young, while he has served the old—for I believe, ma’am, the most noble
the Earl of Loam is long past the meridian. Besides, ma’am, we Early
Victorians had not your husband’s educational advantages. There were no
Board schools for me. Not that I’m complaining, ma’am. We could still
teach the young ’uns a thing or two about respectability.” And so with
a proud humility (and an intuition that there was to be no more port)
he took his leave, again shutting the door with the utmost delicacy. He
was, in truth, well content. He had seen his boy. The sacred lamp of
respectability was not out.
But Mr. Crichton sat in a maze, still washing his hands with invisible
soap.