mnusE. ARTHUR TRAIN CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM Mrs. J.E.Trevor Cornell University Library PS 3539.R15B9 The butler's story;being the reflections 3 1924 021 837 913 Cornell University Library The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924021837913 THE BUTLER'S STORY BOOKS BY ARTHUR TRAIN PnBUSHED BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS The Butler's Story. Illustrated by Yohn S1.25 True Stories of Crime. Illustrated . . . J1.50 McAllister and His Double. Illustrated by Yohn J1.50 Tlie Prisoner at the Bar. Kew and Enlarged Edition S1.60 " Have you any peanuts for the swans ?" he says THE BUTLER'S STORY Being the Reflections, Observations and Experiences of Mr. Peter Ridges, of Wapping-on-Velly, Devon, Sometime in the Service of Samuel Carter, Esquire, of New York. Written by Himself and Edited BY ARTHUR TRAIN Author of "The Prisoner at the Bar," "McAllister and His Double," "True Stories of Crime," "Mortmain," Etc. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY F. C. YOHN CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS NEW YORK : : 1909 COPVBIGHT, ig09, BY CHAilLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Fublblied March, igog MR. AMOS CONTENTS CHAPTER I. The Carter Family 3 II. I Get in Mr. Tom's Way 33 III. On Servants in General 63 IV. Getting in on " the Ground Floor " . . 83 V. On Money and Happiness 113 VI. I Turn Detective 141 VII. Real Swells and Others 172 VIII. The Deluge 198 IX. Safe at Anchor 231 ILLUSTRATIONS "Have you a,ny peanuts ior the swans?" he says Frontispiece PACING PAGE So Mr. Tom grinds his teeth and shakes his fist and yells 60 My eye ! But I nearly dropped, I was that astonished 100 "From now on he is going to tell the truth and do right, no matter wot the consequences may be" 218 THE BUTLER'S STORY THE BUTLER'S STORY THE CARTER FAMILY TT is fifteen years and over since Lord Craven ■*- called me into his study after luncheon and says, "'Ears have they but they hear not, eyes have they but they see not, tongues have they but they speak not.' Do you-know to wot that refers, Ridges ? " " No, my lord," says L "To men servants," says he, " and particular to but- lers," looking at me very hard. "Very good, my lord," says L "That is all," says he. "Thank you, my lord," says I, and I left his presence, and up to this time have neither seen, heard, nor spoke, saving of those things a butler should, for he was a wise man if a hard drinker, [3] THE BUTLER'S STORY and I was heartbroke to leave his service on account of the bankruptcy, although he paid us all off private before he was posted. That was how I came to leave England hop- ing that I might run across him again, although he was going into the cattle business, and per- haps enter his service. But he had gone to Manitoba, and once in America I soon learned that only in New York could I hope to secure a situation such as I was used to. Yet I do not believe that my old master's injunction would lead him to include writing down in a notebook the things one's descendants might care to read, and indeed the life of a man servant is so silent that only in some such way can he retain the power of speech. For at the age of forty-one I feel less at ease with my ekals than of yore and awkward and boorish. This perhaps is one of the disadvantages of a life in service. But in the silence of my own bedroom I can take my pen in hand and am often astonished at how easy I can write. To be sure I have read a great deal, but I [4] THE CARTER FAMILY fancy it is more because my father told me that in Devon his grandfather was a learned man who could both read and write and who desired to send his son, my father's father, to a publick school, being a freeholder, but hard times com- ing forced him to sell his farm and my grand- father entered the army and my father went into service. So from now on I am going to keep a record of such things as strike my fancy or im- press me as thoughts worth preserving, for even a man in service may profit by wot he sees and have a philosophy of life. Besides, if I did not employ my time in some such way it would hang heavy on my hands, for I have made but few friends here, and even at The Yellowplush, which is a club composed of the hupper men servants from the most ex- clusive New York families, I find little to interest me. Instead of having a churchwarden and a quiet bottle of stout over a hand at whist you must keep pouring down whisky straight and bragging about how many railroads your master owns and how many actresses he knows. [5] THE BUTLER'S STORY Moreover, the talk is not all it should be by any manner of means, and while such things may be discussed by gentlemen over their wine after dinner and. allowance made, yet a self- respecting man servant should be more par- ticular as to his manner of speech. And I have Mr. Amos's authority for this very thing, for one night after a dinner at our house when the gentlemen had told some stories that beat anything I ever heard in the stables, which is bad enough God knows, so that I was quite hot under the hair and James the second man almost fell through the transom listening on the stepladder, Mr. Amos called me over very serious and says: "Ridges, do you know any stories like that ?" he says. "Well, sir," says I, "no offense meant, but I don't sir," I says. "I'm glad to hear it," says he, very solemn. " If you were guilty of making use of such lan- guage I could not bring myself to come here," he says. "Remember, Ridges, we gentlemen [6] THE CARTER FAMILY pay our servants to he respectable." Then he turned on his heel and went after the others, and I really don't know now exactly wot he meant by it at that, for when he is most sadlike you will see a twinkle in the corner of his mouth, and when he is laughing the most merrily he says the wisest and sharpest things. After Lord Craven I like him best of all the gentlemen I have ever met and I would like to enter his service were it not for the fact that he lives in lodgings and cannot afford to keep a man. Besides, although he does not know it, there is another bond between us which is that we are both men of literary tastes, for he writes essays and books on philosophy, full of gloom and about the evil in the world, and people say that he is a pessymist and how it is too bad for one so young to be so cynical, although he is the gayest person who comes here and is always going out to dinner and leading cotillions and bothered to death by the ladies, so that Mrs. Carter is anxious to have him at the house. Wot is more, I think Mr. Amos really likes [7] THE BUTLER'S STORY her and he never says a word except in kindness about any of them saving Mr. Tom. Mr. and Mrs. Carter is both a little afraid of him be- cause he knows everybody even more than they do and they are forever asking him about the big houses he goes to, but he always puts them orf and will not tell them anything. The strangest thing of all is, although he goes with all the swellest people, he says and does wotever he likes, and although he has the grandest man- ners, like a duke when he wishes, he generally is playing jokes and talking like a anarchist. That is one of the queer things about these New York people. If anybody does not act and talk just so, doing and saying exactly the same thing as everybody else, they think he must be vulgar, whereas Mr. Amos says it is vulgar to be com- mon, that it is common to be ordinary and that it is ordinary to be Hke everybody else. But the minute they get the idea that in spite of being different anybody is clever and just talks that way to be interesting, he can say and do wot he pleases. [8] THE CARTER FAMILY Now Mr. Amos's father was a wealthy cotton man whose partner took a lot of their customers' money and then shot hisself. Well, the old gen- tleman, although it was not necessary in law, sold everything he had and paid over all the money so that he had nothing hisself and then he went back on a salary so he could send Mr. Amos to college. Everybody thought it was a fine thing to do, as it was, if I do say it myself, and Mr. Amos is the same kind, for now that his father is too old to work he spends every after- noon with him and supports him by his writing. I have often seen the old gentleman here at din- ner, and Miss Patricia calls him "Uncle Mo." The way they got acquainted was that Mr. Carter was one of the creditors, and when Mr. Amos's father wanted to pay him back he wouldn't take the money, but the old gentleman made him do it. Mr. Amos is the greatest fellow for his joke you ever see and I shall never forget the first time I saw him. It was at our country place The Beeches (there is only one little one, but [9] THE BUTLER'S STORY Mrs. Carter liked the name) and there is a long drive which cost a lot of money leading up to the house and all lined with busts of Roman Emperors and their mistresses. In the middle is a sort of marble pool with swans swimming in it and rows of little hedges alongside of it. The swans look very fine and genteel. Well, as I was saying, we were having a house party and up comes a motor with a lot of young ladies and Mr. Amos. I and the four footmen had come out, as is proper, and was standing on the steps to receive the guests. So out jumps Mr. Amos — I didn't know him then — very swell looking and walks right up to me and says perfectly serious : "Have you any peanuts for the swans?" he says. Well, James he burst right out laughing, so I says: "I beg pardon, sir, but we don't give pea- nuts to the swans. They have patent 'Swan- food,'" I says. "Poor swans!" he says. "They should have peanuts," and he went right on in with the young ladies. I couldn't make him out. Mon- [ 10] THE CARTER FAMILY day morning when they went away, about eight gentlemen left together in a motor. Mr. Amos came out last and gave me a five-dollar note. The four footmen was all lined up on the steps to see them off. As the motor started along Mr. Amos leans out and waves his hand at us and calls out: "Good-by, boys!" and that was the last I saw of him for a long time. Our house in New York is on Fifth Avenue and one of the finest in the city, having cost, I once heard Mr. Carter say, all told, counting furniture, about one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, but the place in the country where the family spend most of the time cost all of three hundred thousand, and, as Mrs. Carter says, is the very latest thing in Louis Sixteenth. To be entirely honest I have never seen anything like it in England, the principal difference being in the bathrooms, which there are none if very few upon the other side. In our New York house each bedroom, even the smallest, has a bathroom of its own, and on the fourth floor it is a fact [ II ] THE BUTLER'S STORY that the bathrooms is bigger than the bedrooms. There are twenty bedrooms in the Fifth Avenue house and there are twenty-one bathrooms, which takes the entire time of two men to keep clean, but we take the same men to the country where there are thirty-four bathrooms and they work longer hours. The parlor maid, Evelyn Raymond, who wants to be a actress and is very witty, calls them "swobbers" from the nautical term "to swob." But at Craven Hall it was a long way to a bath. On the whole as long as I am not obliged to clean them they seem worth having, although the gentlemen and ladies do not look to be any cleaner than those I was used to in England. I remember a green second man I had once who had never seen a bathroom and who used to go into one on the guest room floor on his afternoons out and read. He said it made him feel rich to have marble all around and that he would never have marble on all sides again until he was put in a receiving tomb, but Mrs. Carter found him in there one day and said she would [ 12 1 THE CARTER FAMILY not mind his using it for its proper purposes, which would have been a good thing, but that if he wanted to read he had better go to the Lenox Library. After that I found an excuse to give him the sack, for I thought he did not know his place. There is certainly an extraordinary number of servants employed in our house considering the high wages they get. We keep thirty-two in the country and nineteen in town. IN THE COUNTRY One butler One housekeeper One steward One chef Two assistant chefs Three kitchen maids Four laundresses Four footmen One pantry maid Two parlor maids Three valets Two ladies' maids Four chambermaids Two house men ("The swobbers") One baker [ 13 ] IN THE CITY One butler One housekeeper One steward One chef One assistant Two kitchen maids Two laundresses Two footmen One parlor maid One valet Two ladies' maids Two chambermaids Two house men ("The swobbers" again) THE BUTLER'S STORY You may imagine wot a crowd it is that sits down at the servants' table for meals and it would be orful if it were not for the fact that most of the men is irregular, dropping in one after the other, and one of the kitchen maids is really just a servants' waitress and kept busy all the time. Of course the housekeeper has her meals in her own room, and the steward gets his out, and the chefs have a table of their own as in all well-regulated households. Speaking by the book I am supposed to eat in the ser- vants' dining room but I find it irksome to do so and hardly ever go there, getting my meals in the pantry after the family. This does not count the chauffeurs, the coachman and grooms, and the men who work on the place, but these do not eat in the house. I should also mention "Aunty Morgan," Master Willie's old nurse, who has nothing to do and just lives at the house because there is nothing else to do with her. I must confess I miss it like it was in dear old England when all the hupper servants had din- ner in the housekeeper's room with me at the [H] THE CARTER FAMILY head of the table and all the others in order of rank. I can recall some parties which was almost as dtstangay as those at my master's board, for the maids always wore low neck and short sleeves otherwise known as day collette, which is the invariable custom, and some of them looked like the finest ladies. On such occasions our manners was quite as good and more formal than hupstairs, for I have had (when we had a large house party) a Princess's maid on my right and a Duchess's maid on my left, and so on down to the salt, all in the loveliest clothes imaginable. Once when His Royal Highness was with us I had Mr. Hunter, His Royal High- ness's Third Groom of the Chambers sitting be- side me. It was a wonderful experience, for he was the most cultivated and distinguished gen- tleman I ever met. And this reminds me that I have not told about the family, which I should have done long ago. There are six in all, but only five in the house for Mr. Tom has his rooms outside, for which God be praised. First there is Mr. [ 15] THE BUTLER'S STORY Carter, who was a stock-broker and is now wot they call over here a "promoter." He was in cotton, and then he was in oil (which sounds like a specimen), and now he is in cotton-oil. You can never tell what he will be in next. Mr. Amos says a lot of the oil is water (which is a joke), but Mr. Carter does not mind and says in private that you can fool some of the people all the time, but I fancy he does hisself a injustice because I have heard that the oil he was in was standard oil and if so of course it could not have any water in it and must be all right. Anyway the Bible says oil maketh a cheerful counte- nance and Mr. Carter has got the cheerfuUest one I ever see, quite red and very round, with little twinkling blue eyes He is not very aris- tocratic looking, but he is more so than a lot of baronets I have seen, some of which are a rum lot. And that brings me to Mrs. Carter, my mis- tress, of whom I have already spoke by minu- endo, and perhaps that is the best way to de- scribe her because you would not find out wot [ i6] THE CARTER FAMILY a really kind-hearted woman she is to look at her and see her carrying on in society. She is quite stout, not to say fat, with a enormous bust and you would laugh to see the houseman carry- ing her body downstairs for the seamstress to try a dress on. She is more like my Aunt Jane who lives in Wopping-on-Velly in Devon than anybody else I know, although I do not think her axcent is as pure as Aunt Jane's. Now Mrs. Carter she came from Piqua, Ohier, where her father was a chemist or, as they say here, a apothecary, and when she was first married to Mr. Carter he was a very small clerk in cotton and they was both by way of being in very umble circumstances. Then one day a friend of Mr. Carter's who was likewise a clerk invented some way of pressing together the bales so they did not take up so much room or something in regard to the strings you tie it with, and Mr. Carter gave him fifteen dollars for harf of the idea, and presently they was granted a monopoly on it and before long sold it for ten million dollars. That was [ 17 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY twenty years ago when Mrs. Carter was only thirty-five and Mr. Tom was fifteen years old and Master Willie had not been born yet, and the family all lived in Brooklyn with Mr. Car- ter's mother. Now you would not expect Mrs. Carter to act as unto the manner born under the circumstances and it is really astonishing how well she does and it would be hard for most people to tell she was not a lady but only a woman, for it is not in the things she does but in those she doesn't or is afraid to that you can see the mortar and pestle. She has improved some- thing wonderful in the ten years in which I have been in her service, in part owing to my careful tootilage — a influence potent if unseen. So far as her appearance is concerned her maid Eliza has left nothing to be desired, and she looks quite a stunner in her Louis XVI costume made by Callow, so that if you didn't know her you would really be afraid of her as some of the servants are. Then there is Mr. Tom, but perhaps the less said of him the better for he is a rotter if there [ i8] THE CARTER FAMILY ever was one and a bad lot altogether, for he was just at the wrong age when his father got his money and it started him orf bad. He is entirely different from any of the others and is quite tall and very dark with hollows under his eyes as if he didn't sleep, and a waxy sort of look in his face but not bad looking at that. He only comes home to the biggest dinners and to ask his father for money, and sometimes the language he uses is horrible to think of, but why I dislike him most is the way he makes fun of his mother right before the servants, whereas he is not fit to sit at the same table with her. Miss Harriet Carter is not a bit like him, al- though she is quite disagreeable enough to her parents. She is about thirty-two and has been "out" a good deal over ten years, but when she was introduced to society Mr. and Mrs. Carter's position was not as good as it is now and Miss Harriet has never caught up. Of course she goes out a lot but I fancy the people who accept her father and mother are inclined to go a little shy on her, for she is a big girl like a horse and [ 19] THE BUTLER'S STORY has never got over the way of talking she learned at the publick school. All of which makes a anomylous situation, viz.: Mr. and Mrs. Carter know all the swellest people a little and exchange entertainments with them and have them at The Beeches and to go cruising on the steam yacht, but Mr. Tom and Miss Harriet do not know their sons and daughters, except at a distance. The difference between them lies right here, that Mr. and Mrs. Carter, while they put on more or less side, are not ashamed of where they come from or how they got their money and simply want to be like other rich people and to have a good time, but Mr. Tom and Miss Harriet are ashamed of their father and mother, which is unfilial and betokens a mean nature. Still you cannot blame Miss Harriet so much because she has been a sort of odd stick all her life and now she has her own circle of friends who are nearly fashionable but not quite and who do everything the swell people do only much more so. Miss Harriet is great on afternoon [20] THE CARTER FAMILY tea at Sherry's and Bridge Parties at the Wal- dorf, and you can bet harf a crown she'll have a box at every kind of charitable musical show that is going. Now this is wot I mean. We had a small dinner of twenty-eight at our house one evening and a certain lady was there from Chicago whose husband had been in oil with Mr. Carter. The lady was more like wot Mrs. Carter had been fifteen years ago and as she was quite rich she thought it would be a good time to make an impression on New York. Now it happened that it was really Miss Harriet's dinner party instead of her mother's and most of her swellest friends was present and it was a unfortunate time for the Chicago lady to select. So she says very loud: "Oh, we had such a charming time in Paris — perfectly lovely," she says, " and we had a most interesting experience," she says, "we saw Caro- lus Duran ascend several times in his air ship." Everybody looked a bit astonished and then one of the gentlemen put his hand over his [21] THE BUTLER'S STORY mouth and sort of choked and Miss Harriet got very red and says: "Santos Dumont, you mean, don't you ?" she says. And the Chicago lady looked green and says: " Yes, of course, Santos Dumont. How stu- pid of me!" she says. Later on when she had recovered herself she got a-talking about her house on the Boulevard by the Chicago Lake and says: "You know my husband and I just went to Eurrup and left the architect carte blanche to do everything, even to buying the tidies," she says. "We told him that wot we wanted was for him to make us, regardless of expense, a beautiful home!" she says. Well, there was such a stillness that the lady thought she had created just the impression she wanted and made amends for Carolus Duran, until Miss Harriet says very icy: " How perfectly delightful to be able to afford such a lugsury as to have your architect buy your tidies!" [22] THE CARTER FAMILY Then they all began to talk very fast about how the new basso who played the Devil at the Opera didn't wear anything but spangles. Arfter everybody had gone and James and I was taking the flowers out of the drawring-room to send to the Children's Hospital Miss Harriet snapped at her mother. " How could you invite such a vulgar woman to the house to meet my friends! I'm humili- ated!" she says. Mrs. Carter just laughed. "I thought it was rather funny,!" she says. "Poor Fanny!" she says. "She is one of the best women in the world." But Miss Harriet was hot clear through and she says, "I suppose she is the kind you was brought up with," she says. And Mrs. Carter's lip sort of trembled and she didn't say anything for a minute and then she says: " I think you must be tired, dearie. Let's go to bed." [23] THE BUTLER'S STORY That is the contradiction in people, for the very next day Mrs. Carter would hardly speak civil to the man virho came to show her a sketch for the new mantelpiece. When you come down to it there is no par- ticular difference that I can see between my mistress and her eldest daughter (I do not speak now of Miss Patricia) and the women who work for them. In fact there is no one of them who is so gentle and well favored as Eliza Thomas, my mistress's maid. And not putting it down by way of a jest, did not James the second man when he was cleaning the parlor window over- hear a cabby say to my mistress, Mrs. Carter, not being able to tell she was not a servant on account of her mackintosh (for they are all made alike) : "Hello, Maggie, are you out promenayding ?" Which is wot Lord Craven used to call a argu- mentum ad hominum. Now there were plenty of Carters on the Devon side when I was a boy and I have heard my father say that one by the name of Carter [24] THE CARTER FAMILY kept pigs for his grandfather. For what is a Carter? He is one who carts, just as a Smith is a smith, and a Wheelwright is or was a wheel- wright. And if it is so in England it is a great deal more so in America. But when my mistress goes out she would have you believe that she was royalty at the very least and so would Mrs. Padden and Mrs. Bos- tock and the other ladies who wear coronets in their hair which is contrary to etiquette. Which is not saying that I do not like Mrs. Carter, for I know very well that she values my good opinion and frequent inquires my advice upon matters of procedure. In fact sometimes I have thought that when we were together she had less savoir faire than when in company. At any rate she does not make so much effort, and effort is quite necessary for her. But I may say on passong that Mrs. Carter's manners in public is more formal and her manners in pri- vate less formal than any lady I have worked for, not to say at times almost vulgar. That is the chief reason that I care less for life in [25 J THE BUTLER'S STORY America, for Mrs. Carter always treats me as an ekal on ordinary occasions and like a sweep in company and I am neither one nor the other. In England I have seen my Lord Craven jump out of his brougham and slap a shabby looking gentleman on the back right by the Ser- pentine and drag him home to dinner with a fine company and make much of him because he had written a book about old Roman ruins, and my lord always had about him a group of gentlemen and ladies who had no money, but who were either play actors, or sportsmen, or poets, or painters, and with them the best folk in England, and all of them seemed at home with one another and often I could not properly serve the courses at dinner so great was the laughter and goings on. But here, although Mrs. Carter goes to all the great balls and banquets and has her box at the opera, to say nothing of her country place and the great steam yacht that cost a hundred thousand pound, neither she nor her guests seem to take much pleasure in them, and all who comes to [26] THE CARTER FAMILY her house are rich ladies exactly like herself, and formal and careful always to appear just so for fear it might be supposed they did not know wot was wot. There has hardly been a single person distinguished in art or music or letters (saving Mr. Amos) sit at our table, and when Mrs. Carter gives a swell musical I have seen great singers that had the run of Lord Craven's house and have often handed me a tenner in the old days and who my Lord was proud to call his friends, shown to a side room and when sent for come out and sing their songs and go away unspoken to by anybody. But that was when I first entered their service. Once when Moseer Ritz the great tenor had sung for us and was going down the front stair- case he stopped and patted me on the shoulder and says: "Well, my chere old Peter, how are you?" And it brought back to me all the good times in Park Lane and the tears almost came into my eyes so that I could hardly speak, but we had a few words and when he had gone out I turned [27] THE BUTLER'S STORY around and there was Mr. Carter, and he says, surprised-like: "Ridges, do you know Ritz?" And I says, " I know Mr. Ritz, sir, because he was an old friend of my master Lord Craven." And Mr. Carter says under his breath, "The deuce he was!" And the next winter when they had him again he was asked to dinner first. At the dinner Mrs. Carter introduced him to a fine lady in the drawring-room and says in a sort of apologetic way, " Let me present Moseer Ritz, the great singer, you know." Then to Mrs. Carter's surprise, for you could see it, the lady grabs Mr. Ritz's hand and he bends over and kisses hers and they begin to jabber French at a great rate and the lady turns to Mrs. Carter and says with a smile, " Moseer Ritz and I were old friends in England." After that Mr. Carter sometinies asked me wot other friends of Lord Craven's was of that sort, and some of them were asked to sing and play for us and always invited to dine and in- [28] THE CARTER FAMILY troduced to everybody. But of course it did not happen all at once as I write it, but came about very slow and gradual so as hardly to be noticed. But this incident occurred nearly ten years ago and to-day you should see how these sing- ing people put on side. Some of them is quite ordinary but they act as if there was no one else to be considered. It is nine years since Mile. Peche sang at our hous6. After the guests had all assembled she came in by herself and sang her songs while all the audience kept right on talking and paying no attention to her, and at the end of the programme Mr. Carter walked up to her before everybody and handed her a cheque, face out, so you could see a thousand dollars written on it, and she turned quite white and her eyes glared like automobile lamps and she tore it all up in little fine pieces and put it on the palm of her hand and blew them straight at him. He must have felt orful. After the swaree was over he said he reckoned he had made a break and Mrs. Carter said she guessed [29] The BUTLER'S STORY he had too and that he should have knowed better. Mr. Tom wasn't there or he would have been profane. But that was before the time Moseer Ritz spoke to me on the stairs. There was another time after that I recall at The Beeches when Mr. Carter telegraphed to an agent in New York to send him out the best music to be had and not to spare expense. He was going to have a big dinner and he wanted dinner music but he didn't say so in his telegram, and after the first course had been served four little men in long hair drove up in the public hack from the station and got out very angry because no carriage had been sent to meet them. Mr. Carter had instructed me to put the musi- cians in the pantry, and tell them play there with the door part open, so I tried to pacify them and put them in. Then I told Mr. Carter the musicians had arrived, and he spoke up quite loud so everybody could hear and says: " So the beggars have come at last, have they ? Well tell them to hit it up and give us a tune!" But when the quartette saw the pantry and the [30 J THE CARTER FAMILY dinner being served in it and realized how they was expected to sit there and play they took on dreadful and the littlest one shook his fist in my face and talked like a watchman's rattle for almost five minutes. Then they all turned around and walked out of the house. Well, Mr. Carter was pretty hot about it then, but he was hotter next day when he got a bill for one thousand dollars for the services of the Kreisel Quartette, the celebrated concert players. He had asked for the best and he had got them. After that he and Mrs. Carter be- gan to see how important these musical people think they are, and treated them according. But I am a long way orf from Miss Patricia and Master Willie who are the ones that I care for most of all and saving for whom I should have left the Carters long ago, for they are as different from all the rest as black is from white, which is, I fancy, because they was born too late to feel the bad effects of no money at all and then a sudden abundance of it, and yet have had all the refining influence that money [31] THE BUTLER'S STORY can bring, for Miss Patricia is a thoroughbred if ever there was one and a more beautiful and wittier lady than any I ever knew in England. Dear Miss Patricia! How often I have wished I could tell her in other ways than simple service how I worship the ground she walks on and I would rather hear her say "Thank you Ridges" than get a twenty dollar note from Mr. Carter. God bless you, Miss Patricia (I can say it here in my book and no one will find it out) and may your smile be as happy and your hair as golden in the sunshine and your laughter as clear and merry until Peter Ridges is too old to know to the contrary! [32] II I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY WHEN I read over wot I wrote the last time I took my pen in hand it seemed all mixed up and sort of wandering, for I had intended to write mostly about Miss Patricia and I found I had not wrote about her at all but instead a lot about the rest of the family and Mr. Amos and the musical people. I shall ask Mr. Amos how to write so that one sticks to one thing and puts it in the right place, for he is a wonderful writer, or at least so everybody says, only he always makes fun of everything, even wot he writes hisself, so you can never tell. Another thing I notice is that although I write very easy it does not sound as well when I read it over aloud as when I speak ordinary. But the reason for that is because I have learned how [33] THE BUTLER'S STORY to say everything I do say exactly right, which is for the most part only "Very good, madam, or sir," or "Thank you, madam, or sir," or "The carriage is here, or dinner is served," et cetyra, et cetyra, so that perhaps it is just as well not to put on too much literary pretence, but to go ahead with my story, in the hope that if it is in- side of one it will come out somehow. Now something has occurred that I should put down here at once and yet I do not know whether to do so before I have described Miss Patricia and Master Willie who is at school and back for the holidays, but as it concerns the household I will postpone them for a moment and do so. It is about EHza Thomas, for night before last when the bell rang, as I was going down the corridor I came upon her and Mr. Tom standing behind the portieres very close together, and Eliza had something shiny hang- ing from her hand. When Mr. Tom saw me he turned around very sudden and walked away, but Eliza she seemed sort of frightened and not to know wot to do and just stood there [34] I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY sort of pale, and I saw it looked like a pearl necklace, and when I had passed she ran up- stairs as fast as she could. Well, Mr. Tom said nothing to me, and in- deed we has very little to say to each other at any time, and I went down to the pantry feeling very depressed, for Eliza is one of the best girls I have ever seen in service. In the first place she is so gentle that all the servants are fond of her and in the second she is so conscientious that Mrs. Carter could not live vnthout her. Moreover she is as pretty as any lady I have ever seen except Miss Patricia, and speaks as soft and correct and her behavior is always modest and quiet. Her father is an electrician over in Astoria and she has a brother who be- longs to the Twelfth Regiment and I suppose that is how she came to believe all the things Mr. Tom must have told her. O, you, Mr. Tom! Some time I would like to pound your beastly head! You "Tom!" There I have said it! Tom! Just "Tom!" You are not harf the man that I am and you know it! [35] THE BUTLER'S STORY I never had any interest in Eliza myself — not in the least — but being as I am head of the house I felt it my duty to speak to her that evening on the stairs. I was as nice as I could be and by way of conversation asked her about her brother. She did not seem to want to talk, so I says: "I hope you won't be offended, Eliza, but where did you get that necklace you had this afternoon ?" Well, you should have seen how flaming her cheeks got! I never seen her like it before. And her eyes just snapped as she says: "Wot business is that of yours, Peter Ridges ?" I hadn't meant to hurt her feelings so I says: "Don't be angry with me, Eliza, but if Mr. Tom gave it to you I should be sorry," I says. "And why? I should like to know?" she says, keeping up the same dignified tone. " Because when gentlemen give working-girls jewelry," I says, "They don't mean them any good," I says. [36] I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY Then Eliza took out her handkerchief and begin to cry and I felt like a brute. " I don't know wot right you have to speak to me like that," she says. " I think it very crool of you." "I'm sorry, Eliza," I says, "But I was only speaking for your own good. I am afraid of that Mr. Tom," I says. Then she got angry again. "Perhaps you don't know him," she says. "Nor you neither, I fancy," I says. She started to go hupstairs. "How long has this been going on ?" I says, stepping in front of her. "Kindly let me go by," she says with the tears in her eyes. "Or I'll complain to Mr. Carter." "O, will you ?" I says. "It would be a good thing if you did." Then she made a sudden rush and got by me, and although I called "Eliza" after her several times she did not turn round and I did not see her again that night, but I was very depressed [37] THE BUTLER'S STORY about it because I distrusted Mr. Tom and wondered wot her father and mother would say if they knew he was making up to her in that way, and then the extraordinary thing hap- pened, for as I was going up the stairs I found a little folded scrap of paper like a soldier's cap and when I opened it wot should it be but a note in Mr. Tom's handwriting. It had no beginning and no ending, but it just said: "Will be at S.W. corner of Fifth Avenue to-morrow night at eight thirty." Well, there was a pretty how do you do ! My first impulse was to tell Mr. Carter, and then to tell Eliza's father or her brother, but by the time I had got back to the pantry I had decided not to do either, because if I did the first Mr. Tom would lie about it and Eliza would get packed off and she would fall into his clutches, and if I told her father it would make trouble for her at home. So I says to myself, " Ridges, this is a piece of business for you to manage yourself." The note I had found on the stairs bothered [38] I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY me quite a bit wot to do with it. Of course, it belonged to Eliza but if I should give it back to her it would be a warning that I had read it and knew wot they was planning, which would spoil any chance I might otherwise have to de- feat Mr. Tom. Moreover, she would never guess I had it and would not dare to make much of a fuss looking for it, and of course she had read it before she lost it, so I burned it up. Harf past eight to-morrow night! O you "Tom!" You will have to count in Mr. Peter Ridges afore you can harm a hair of that poor innocent girl's head! Well, I had some doubt as to whether I could get orf the next evening but, as luck would have it, the whole family went to the opera and left the dinner table a little arfter eight. Miss Harriet always kicks and says it is an "evidence of ill breeding" to change your hours to go to the opera, because no one who is anybody ever gets there before nine o'clock, but Mr. Carter says he will be darned if he is going to pay a hundred thousand dollars for a box and not see [39] THE BUTLER'S STORY the whole show. Besides he Hkes to see the other people come in and so does Mrs. Carter, and they always leave early to go to bed. Well, I almost wanted to call up Mr. Amos and tell him about Eliza, but I decided that there was enough people interested in the poor girl already. So as soon as I had passed the cigars I slipped hupstairs and put on my Inverness coat that used to be Lord Craven's, and my top hat which be- longed to the same, and went out the front door, and wot should I see just at the same moment but Eliza step out of the area all fixed up in her prettiest clothes and the feather boa Miss Pa- tricia gave her on Christmas, too pretty for any- thing, and trip off as smart as you please for the corner. I followed just behind so as not to be seen and lit a cigar so as to appear like a gentle- man, and when she got to the corner a handsome wheeled out of a side street and there was Mr. Tom, and Eliza sprang in and they started orf and I nearly bit my cigar in two. Well I had not planned out just wot I was going to do and for a moment I was dazed but just then a cabby [40] I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY pulled up alongside and says "Keb, sir ?" allur- ing, and I forgot all about the money and says "Poller that cab," and in I got. Well, the cabby had followed other cabs before I fancy for he whipped up his old horse and away we went lickety cut. They went down Fifth Avenue at a great rate, and turned into Thirty- fourth Street, stopped at the Herald Square Theatre and went in. That sort of balked me because I had no ticket and I knew they would stay there all the evening, so without thinking I says to the cabby quite unconscious, "Wot are we going to do now?" "I guess we'll go in arfter em," he says. Well, somehow I had took quite a fancy to that cabby and I says, "Right!" I says, "in we go. But first how much do I owe you ?" I says. So he said it was a dollar but added as how he hoped he might have the pleasure of taking me home arfter the theatre. Then he says, " If you are particular interested in any party in that other handsome," he says, "the driver is [41 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY an old pal of mine and I can fix it up," he says. Then the scales fell from my eyes and I told him how he was a good fellow and I would take him at his word, and with that he whistled very loud and sharp and his friend turned around and we all drove up the street. I gave the other cabby a dollar and he was most genial and told us how he had an appoint- ment to take the same parties to Rector's arfter the theatre was over at eleven o'clock. They was sure to stay until it was over because it was a "hot show," he says. So I and my cabby arranged for him to wear a white paper in the back of his hat-band so we could see him in the crowd, and for my man to stick right behind him all the time. Well, I began to feel like Sherlock Holmes and spending the two dollars and another dollar I had give to my cabby extra had made me feel reckless, so I bought an en- trance ticket and went in. Well, I had to stand up, and when I had got used to looking so far as the stage I really was [42] I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY ashamed to be there it was that immodest. My eye! I never had supposed that such things could go on with the police hunting for crime, and right on Broadway too. Then I looked for Eliza and Mr. Tom and couldn't see them, but finally I saw Eliza's feather boa in the back of a ' box I had thought was empty and I grew hot and then cold and wanted to rush in and take her away and would have done it at that only for making a scene. That show was something scandalous. How any decent woman could have sat through it is more than I can understand. After a while two actors wot pretended they was artists came out in tam o' shanters and corduroy suits and sang a silly song and arranged a lot of big easels in the back of the stage in a row. Then a lot of big handsome girls in kimonos came in and each one got behind a easel and took orf her kimono and threw it away. Well, it made you think wot was going to happen next! All you could see was their heads above and their bai;e feet be- low and the canvas on the easel in between. [43 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY Then just as I had about made up my mind to rush into the box and drag out EHza, the easels began to fold up together and you could see their necks and arms and their legs as far up as their knees, and the stillness grew intense. I just held my breath. Just as the canvas was going to fold up entire the girls give a little screech and jumped down off wot they had been standing on back of the easels and let their skirts (which they had been holding up all the time) fall down! My eye ! I almost had palpitation of the heart. Then a big roar went up all over and a drunken man in the gallery said: " W-o-o-ow ! " very loud, and everybody laughed again. But I felt sick to think anybody would bring a decent girl to see a show like that, for its entire object was to see how far you could go. And then as I was debating whether or not to stay and lose any more of my self respect, all of a sudden there was a little commotion on one of the sides of the theatre and I saw my dear Miss Patricia walking up the aisle looking straight in [44] I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY front of her and her skirts gathered up as if she was afraid they would touch some of those peo- ple who was laughing, and right behind her hur- ried a young man I had often seen at our house, named Mr. Gaynes, with lots of money and a pink face and a high collar, and he was trying to say something to her and she wouldn't listen. She walked right out into the foyer all alone and Mr. Gaynes rushed ahead of her and says: "Miss Carter! Miss Carter, don't go home! Please come back." And she turned her eyes on him very cold and says: "Had you ever seen this before you asked me to join your box party ?" And he hesitated and turned redder than ever, and didn't say anything. Then she left him to look for a cab and there was Mr. Tom's and she started to get in. "Beg pardon, miss, but I'm engaged," says the cabby. Just then young Mr. Gaynes came up and says: [45] THE BUTLER'S STORY " I hope you'll at least let me see you home," he says very much embarrassed. " You need not take the trouble," she replies. "I should feel quite as safe by myself." Well, with that he steps back and I took the occasion to nod to the driver that it was all right and that he should let her get in, which he opened the wings of the handsome and did. At the same moment I slipped into my own hand- some just behind and when she had given the address we started orf. Never in my life have I felt greater pleasure than I did then when without her knowing of it I watched over my dear Miss Patricia like a hen taking her chicken under her wing, and I felt so happy about it that I chuckled to myself all the way home won- dering wot the little lady would say if she knew I was there and feeling so proud of her that she would not stay in that place and was brave enough to walk right out alone by herself. When we got nearly home I stopped my hand- some and got out and walked near enough to see that she got up the front steps in safety and [46] I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY then we hurried back to the theatre. This time I did not go in but waited outside and watched the people walking up and down Broadway, which is one of the most interesting things I ever did, for I had never before done so dressed in gentleman's raiment and feeling that I was a part of it. Moreover I learned a good deal about some of the young men who come to our house which has nothing to do with wot I am writing, and a lot of things I should be ashamed to write down as well, but I made up my mind that the nice people who were there having a good time without any particular money seemed to be enjoying it more than the ones that had. I was standing by an aberdasher's show case smoking my second cigar when up came a young gentleman in very swell clothes and says, "I beg your pardon, sir, but will you oblige me with a light?" And who should it be but Mr. Amos ? So I did not say anything, but holds out my weed and while he was puffin he looks in my face and exclaims: "Well of all things! If it isn't Ridges." [47] THE BUTLER'S STORY "Yes, sir," I says, "Asking your indulgence, it is." And he laughs a little laugh all to himself, and says : "Are you gathering sociological data or pon- dering on the ephemeral quality of human happiness ?" "I beg your pardon, sir," I says, "Would you mind saying that again?" "Are you slumming, Ridges, or taking the air?" he asks. Well, I was all taken aback so I hardly knew wot to say and I guess I just stammered and he took me by the arm and says: " We are both alone," he says. " I have often wanted a quiet chat with you," he says. "Wot is the matter with a cigar and a bottle of ale ?" Now nothing would have given me greater pleasure at any other time, but I had business on hand, so I said : "Mr. Amos, I'm very sorry, sir, but I can't go with you. I have an engagement of impor- tance," I says. "I hope you will forgive me." [48] I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY And with that Mr. Amos draws back and laughs again and says: "The fault is mine. Forgive me for disturb- ing your incognito," he says, wotever that is, and he walks on and I could have cursed because I couldn't go along with him he looked so clean and straight and handsome. But in a minute more the people began to come out of the theatre and I thought no more of him, being engrossed in watching for Eliza and Mr. Tom. Almost everybody had left and I had almost concluded they had gone out some other way when they appeared very sudden and jumped into their handsome. I did not think Eliza looked quite so jolly as when she had gone in but I only saw her for a moment. We gave them a good start, because we knew where they was going and then started along arfter them. The streets was full of people going home from the theatres or out to supper and it all looked tremendously elegant and fine and I tried to pretend to myself I was a swell going to keep a rondayvous with some beautiful and talented person. [49] THE BUTLER'S STORY Then the next thing I knew I was being helped out of the handsome by a nigger in uniform about seven feet high who gave me a ticket to use when I came out. Across the sidewalk I could see Eliza and Mr. Tom pushing their way through the door in an orful jam of red-faced men in tall hats and ladies all covered with pearls and diamonds and I sort of drifted along arfter them on a smell of violets and sachet pow- der until I found a valet helping me orf with my coat and giving me another check. By that time I had got the shakes for fear some of Mrs. Carter's friends might be there to recognize me and I was afraid to go in, but I got caught in the crowd and pushed right up against a beautiful woman that looked like a actress, and when I stepped on her foot quite accidental she gave me the sweetest smile. Well, the crush was worse than one of Mrs. Carter's Mondays and I began to see it was no place for a poor man let alone a common servant, but I was in for it and no way to push out, and the next thing I knew I was inside the dining room [50] I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY in front of the crowd right in full sight of every- body. Now I have worked in dining-rooms all my life and, might almost say, was born at a side table, but I must confess I felt entirely day trow. If I had only had a tray in my hands or even a bottle it would have been different, but there I was without anything trying to stand as if I enjoyed it instead of like a automato as usual. That was the hardest part, for my heels would slide together try as hard as I would. The glare and noise almost blinded and deafened me and it was that hot my forehead was all of a sweat. Every second I expected some one at the tables to tell me to fetch the pate or ices and I was on the point of diving back into the crowd to hide myself when the butler steps up to me and bows quite deferential. "One?" says he, holding up a finger. I give him the haughtiest nod I could and he led the way right down the centre of the room and pulls out a chair for me at a table in front of the band. Well, no one pointed or even [51] THE BUTLER'S STORY looked at me that I could see except two ladies who were alone at the next table and I flattered myself I was undiscovered, and arfter the head butler had given a few more people seats he came right back and excused hisself for going orf that way and took out a little pad and seemed real anxious about my getting wot I wanted to eat. "Wot shall it be to-night, sir?" he says quite solicitous, holding his pencil in suspense. " The potage d'espagnole is particular good, and how would a trifle of pompano with sauce diah do to follow?" Now I had et no supper, owing to leaving home in such a hurry of excitement, and I would have given a good deal to say to him, " Bring me a pork pie and a bottle of ale," but I knew he would have dropped dead if I had, so I says very careless like, "O, anything tasty, but let it be hot and enough of it." "To be sure," he says, feeling encouraged, " I suggest a bit of venison steak with currant jelly and sauce a la S ignore with vegetables." [52] I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY "Very good," I says, keeping my eye out for Eliza and Mr. Tom. "And then a canard roti," he adds, "with sauce bigarde, a bit of salad, a sweet, Cammem- bert and coflFee, and a bottle of sparkling Cham- bertin," he says, scribbling it all down on his pad. Then before I had time to say yes or no he shouts "garsoon" and jams the paper into the hand of a red-headed second man and disap- pears. They both disappeared. So I began to feel more at home and as if I had a right to be there and to look around. It really made me dizzy to see all the hats and feathers and bare necks and hear the laughter and popping of corks and smell the rice powder and roses and cologne and feel the warmth of the air. It was like a big hotbed of flowers all in motion. But I noticed that while they was much more at ease they did not look as if they was enjoying themselves any more than the people at Mrs. Carter's dinner parties, and most of the men were either very fat and red or very [53] THE BUTLER'S STORY pale and hollow eyed and all the ladies looked tired and did not seem to be interested in wot was said but spent their time looking at one another. Then another second man appeared with a silver bucket and a red-headed bottle sticking up in it and he whipped it out and waved it around in front of me and before I could say Jack Robinson he had the cork out and was fill- ing my glass. I took a long drink and begun to feel quite at ease. Presently I located Eliza and Mr. Tom way orf in a corner by theirselves and he seemed to be talking very earnest to her and she to be turning away her head, and then my dishes began to come and I had another glass of wine and started in to eat my dinner. My eye ! But it was good! When I had got through the venison I saw the second man was staring rather hard if respectful at me and I says, "Wot are you looking at.?" I says. "Beg pardon, sir," he says somewot embar- rassed, "Ain't you Mr. Ridges?" he says. [54 J I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY " That's my name," I says. " I ain't ashamed of it!" says I. "No offense, sir," he says very apologetic, "But don't you remember 'WiUiam?'" "William wot," I says. "William Rafferty," he says. "Wot used to be with you at Mr. Carter's." And then I recognized him for he had been second man one summer at The Beeches and let go when we come back to town. "Of course," I says, "How are you ?" I says. And with that he began to tell me wot hard luck he had and how he was forced to take a job wherever he could get it. Then he says, "No offense," he says, "But you must have struck oil," says he. Well, all this took some time and it got to be arfter twelve o'clock and a good many of the people began to go away, only those who re- mained seemed to be having a better time. There was fewer people but more noise, and although I was getting sleepy I had a horrid feeling that Eliza might slip away from me. [ 55 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY The Turkish band began to play the Merry Widow waltz and everybody commenced to sing even the second men and especial the two ladies next door who by this time had an escort who had come from an adjoining table, and just as I was finishing up wot was left of my cheese William came back very friendly and there on his tray was a cigar as big as a bobby's billy and he says : "Have a cigar on me, sir," he says. Well I was all took aback for I knew William had played in hard luck but I was afraid he would feel hurt if I refused so I took it and thanked him kindly and said if he was out of a job next spring to look me up. Then I asked for the price and William took a long pink slip out of his waistcoat and laid it; on the table and at the bottom of it was twenty-seven dollars and eighty-five cents! You could have knocked me over with a feather duster. I knew William was watching so I hardly noticed it at all but for a fact I felt weak in the legs as I put my hand in my trousers pocket. But as luck would have it I had nearly harf of my month's wages with [56] I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY me and I tossed one twenty and a ten dollar note over to William and says lofty " Keep the change, William," I says. I was just beginning to feel that since I had paid for pretty near the whole show I was en- titled to be there when I saw Eliza and Mr. Tom getting up. When the butler saw me he came running over and hoping everything had been satisfactory, which it was, saving the price, and by the time he had got through it was time for me to take up the persuit. Eliza looked very wor- ried but her necklace certainly did look fine and she was as pretty as any lady there and a good deal fresher, but wot I was to do I had no idea. I waited in the doorway while Eliza and Mr. Tom had a kind of argumentum on the sidewalk, and she put her hand on his arm and I wanted to kill him, but for her sake I refrained and then they got in. Well I climbed arfter them into my cab and we started huptown. Maybe they was going home, in which case my thirty dollars would ^ave been lost, for I did not need the victuals, and if they wasn't, why [57] THE BUTLER'S STORY wot could I do ? I knew Mr. Tom for an ugly customer drunk or sober. He was never a gen- tleman in either state, and I fancied he was pretty well harf seas over. They drove fast and when they got to Columbus Circle they turned toward the Park. Well, I says to myself, the Park is no place for Eliza with him, and I hol- lered through the hole to the cabby to go round the monniment and cut em orf, for there was nothing else to do and the time had come for something to happen. So my cabby whips up his horse and pretty nearly runs into em on the other side of Colum- bus. Both horses was pulled back on their harnches and both drivers began cussing fast and lively and I knew if anything was to be done it would have to be done orful quick. Mr. Tom had leaped out of his handsome and was swear- ing at his driver because neither cabby seemed to be doing anything, and I stepped out on the opposite side and rushed over and called to Eliza to get out. She didn't hear me at first be- cause she was watching Mr. Tom but presently [58] I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY she turned her head toward me and I could see she was orful white and trembly and I whispered, "It's all right, Eliza — it's me, Peter!" and the next thing I knew I had climbed in with her and she had grabbed hold of my arm and began sobbing "O wot shall I do! O wot shall I do!" Mr. Tom hadn't seen me get in for my cabby had begun to sass him and call him names and Mr. Tom was roaring out that he would have him arrested, and there was such a noise that a mounted policeman came galloping over from the Circle. "Wot is all this row about.?" he says. "This cabby ran me down and then used threatening language to me," says Mr. Tom, shaking his fist at my cabby. "O forgit it," yells the cabby. "It's a lie, orficer. This drunk is trying to occipy two kebs at once," he says. Well, the orficer leaps off his horse and backs my cab away from the other and I thought I saw my chance so I leaned out of the handsome and says very quiet: [59] THE BUTLER'S STORY "Orficer, this man is so drunk," I says, "that he don't know which is his own cab," I says. "The man he is abusing is his own driver." Then the orficer seeing me and Eliza in Mr. Tom's handsome turns to him and says very sharp, "Look here! Wot is the matter with you.? Git back in your own cab and mind your business or I'll run you in!" he says. The minute Mr. Tom heard my voice he turned and made a rush for us but the orficer grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back and shouts, "Be quiet or I'll give you the stick!" he says. So Mr. Tom grinds his teeth and shakes his fist and yells out that I was a strange man who had climbed into his cab and had no business there, but the orficer seeing Eliza beside me was sure that Mr. Tom was simply fighting drunk, so he gives him a shake so Mr. Tom's hat fell orf, and says: "I'll give you one more chance. Get into your cab or come with me," he says. [60] ^■fSfet. V ..^J^' ^f f P'' ;«^i»i^ «»^ r sk P^*f*^' *• /. ^'■r*"^ -„ .fU ^ \ ^ =^ vW, HF ' -■-;...-. ^****** ^^HHH|^^^!r~ 1 i ^^A ^F^' "A I^^^Hj^^^v ^^B^-^^8^^^^JR!f*?^^S9K ^H^S^E^' f ^ ^: ^"f -a g o I GET IN MR. TOM'S WAY Mr. Tom looks at us for about a minute with the worst scowl on his face you ever see and then he picks up his hat and shakes orf the orficer and gets into my cab. So I says to the orficer, "Thank you, orficer. This is a nice per- formance to have happen to a respectable man who is taking a lady home," I says. Yes, sir," he says, touching his cap. " I ought to have run him in," he says, "but I'd have had to take you along as witnesses and he'll sober up all right before morning." "Good night," I says. "Good night, sir," he says, and I give the driver Mr. Carter's address. Then I found that Eliza was clinging to my shoulder and crying and I tried to comfort her, but she kept saying how Mr. Tom would have us both discharged and how she was ashamed to go home. "Next time you'll believe me!" I says. "O Peter," she says. "Mr. Tom is a wicked man, and I never will go near him again." [6i ] THE BUTLER'S STORY "Why did you go to-night ?" I says. "Because he said he loved me and he prom- ised to marry me," she says hiding her face in her hands. "And I beUeved him." "I suppose he was on his way to marry you when I stopped him," I says. Then I was sorry I had said it and begged her pardon and said no one should ever know any- thing about it from me, and as for Mr. Tom he would be afraid to tell. But I knew there was breakers ahead for me. [62] Ill ON SERVANTS IN GENERAL MOST employers distrust their servants and think they are always trying to get the best of them or do something they ought not to do. They are always complaining because the parlor maid hasn't dusted something, or the front door bell is not answered in time, or the butler gets a telephone message wrong or be- cause the servants don't go to bed at harf past ten, and they say that all servants do just as little work as they can without being discharged, and take every advantage and is extravagant and careless and ungrateful. Now I claim to have had some experience in such matters and if I could talk free to some of the employers they would open their eyes. And as the most im- portant thing is what is called the personal rela- tion I will begin with that first. [63] THE BUTLER'S STORY Is servants ungrateful ? Mrs. Carter often says to me, "Ridges, I should think arfter all these years Jones (or Thompson or William or Morton) would have some affection for the family and for me and not leave us in this way just to get a few dollars more at the Woolen- Smiths. It doesn't seem as if you could get anyone to stay with you, no matter how well you treat them!" And she sighs and looks resigned and the housekeeper goes down to Sleezy'sto get another second man. And I have to say: "Yes, madam. It is too bad, madam." Now wot I would like to say is this : "Arfter all you have done for Jones.? Wot, may I ask, have you done for him ? You have given him fifty-five dollars a month more or less regular and sometimes three weeks later, and you have handed him five or ten dollars at Christmas and a couple of fifty cent cravats and a horn of lemon drops. You have seen him when he answered the bell about twice a day for four years except when you was away, which [64] ON SERVANTS IN GENERAL was about five months in the twelve. I don't believe you know his first name, and you would not recognize him out of his livery. " Wot have you done for him ? You have allowed him to sleep in a cold six by twelve bed- room on the top of the house and to have an evening out once in two weeks. When he asks you to go to the Coachman's Ball you act as if you thought he was an abandoned rouey. You have worked him from seven in the morning till twelve at night if necessary, and you don't know wot he has to eat or that the bed he sleeps on hasn't any springs and that the mattress is only two inches thick and is fourteen years old. "Wot have you done for him? You have never given him a word of encouragement or offered to raise his wages and you have forgotten that he existed unless he wasn't around when you rang for him. If the teapot had finger marks on it, or his shoes weren't clean (because you had sent him out to post a letter), or the toast was cold, or the window shade was crooked you have taken his head orf and frightened him [65] THE BUTLER'S STORY into delirium trimmings. And now because he can better hisself and get sixty dollars in an- other place and be a full fledged butler you call him ungrateful. What does he owe you that he should sacrifice sixty dollars a year to stay and work for you ? Wot do any of us owe you ? Is it such a priceless privilege to wait upon you ? " Why should Jones have any personal feeling for you ? Have you got any for him ? Would you hesitate to let him go if you didn't need him ? Would you give him five dollars a month more rather than have him go ? Let us talk sense and count the cards, as Lord Craven used to say. "Jones takes a job as a servant with you be- cause he can't do anything better. He is pre- pared to do a certain amount of work for a cer- tain amount of money provided he gets it, which is not always, and the victuals and beds is not too bad. His hours is long and confining. He hasn't got such a lot of gray matter in his co- coanut or he wouldn't be working for two dol- lars a day — a carpenter gets four and a harf, and a bricklayer gets five — so you can't expect [66] ON SERVANTS IN GENERAL him to be a William E. Gladstone or a Sir Philip Sidney. "Now, if you had a seamstress come in at a dollar and a harf a day you would be standing over her to see that you got your money's worth, or if you had a picture hanger at sixty cents an hour you would keep him busy or let him go when there was no more to be done. Well, the chances are that unless you have a house- keeper, no one never tells Jones just wot his work is or where it begins or where it leaves off. You don't know yourself whether he is supposed to dust the edge of the hard wood floor or the parlor maid. Jones knows that if he gives in to her she will end by making him do all her work, and for her part she isn't going to do any of the work he is paid to do. The end of it is that it isn't done at all and then there is trouble. " But even if you lay out his work decent and in order, and don't give him so much no mortal man could do it and have any time to rest, do you ever see that he does it ? Is there anything [67] THE BUTLER'S STORY in the way of superintendence over him that amounts to anything? Why, you expect him to go Hke a clock that is wound up once a year, only the chances are you never wind him up at all. You treat him like a machine, but you never oil him or repair him or give him a thorough overhauling. But he isn't a machine, he is a human being. If you have horses or a motor you have the vet look them over every month or so and send the machine to be put into shape once in so often. But Jones will be cleaning brasses when he has water on the knee and you will never know it. I had a second man once that worked like a horse for five weeks while his teeth ached fit to kill him. One afternoon he asked permission to go out and the lady stared at him and said it was not his afternoon and scared him so he went back to work without saying a word. The next week he went out and had four hupper teeth took out all at once. Gratitude, indeed!" Now the second thing is the claim that serv- ants have a hostile attitude and also a ' Fm-just- [68 J ON SERVANTS IN GENERAL as-good-as-you-are ' manner, which is another way of saying they are impertinent, but that is all a matter of how they have been treated. If you treat a servant like a human being, he or she will treat you like one. No servant expects you to make a friend of him any more than the ashman. It is not a matter of friendship but of business, although I may say that I have met a lot of ser- vants who were more worth while as friends than most of Mrs. Carter's. You are buying some- thing from them and they are selling something to you. Now if you went into a shop and snapped at the girl at the counter and acted as if she was dirt under your feet you could hardly expect her to fall on your neck. Or if you did not notice the elevator man in the morning or spoke to him rude he would probably forget to stop at your floor next time. If you treat your second-man as if he was a criminal just out of Sing Sing he will be very apt to lose interest in your comfort. You will get the same manners as you give. For in England and America a servant is a free man and his vote may be worth [69] THE BUTLER'S STORY as much as yours, and while he does not care for you to make a companion of him he has as much right to being treated civil as the telephone girl or the drug clerk. I know some women who will spend a morning in a hospital for crippled children like an hangel and come home and make their maid cry, they speak so sharp to her. And that shows a lack of the sense of pro- portion. There are impudent servants but there are impudent clerks. If you keep them in your employ you have no one to blame but yourself. Now of all the foolish ideas the most fooUsh and the one that makes a man lose all patience is the idea that servants must be stoopid and have no more sense than children. Why, it is enough to make you sick if it wasn't funny to hear Miss Harriet talk to one of the women servants. When she wants to be nice and get something out of one of them she talks to her as if she was a child in a Sunday-school class. " How nice for you to be goin to a party," she will say to Evelyn Raymond. "You may have [70] ON SERVANTS IN GENERAL my old white muslin de sware" she says. "Do you waltz or poker ? I suppose you have some ice cream and cake for refreshments?" And Evelyn will say: " Yes, miss. Thank you, miss," and she will take the dress and send it to her little sister who is at the Fordham High School. And then she will tell me about it and laugh fit to kill, for Evelyn is the best fancy dancer orf the stage in New York and goes to the swellest public balls and is always took in a cab and has the hand- somest dresses you ever see. One is a Turkish costume with embroidery and red stockings and slippers, and another is a gipsy, and I know for a fact that there is two hotel men on Broadway who want her to marry them, to say nothing of about a dozen lawyers' clerks, travelling men and a swell druggist. Her eating ice cream! My eye! Why Evelyn goes to all the biggest fancy balls in style, and so do most of the other girls, only they go in the cars. What makes her so high flying is the fact that she had a friend named Rachael Bellew who used to work [71 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY with her and one day she took it into her head to go on the stage which she did with Edna May in the "School Girl" in the chorus. Well, the first thing anybody knew she was in a singing part by herself and all the rage, and it is a fact that she married one of the richest lords in all England and a friend of Lord Craven's, and wot is more / have waited on her at dinner at Craven Hall when they was on a visit. But I never told Evelyn that for it would make her stuck up. But they do not correspond any more now. Now for the others there is the Scandinavian Ball, and the Austrian Peasants Ball, and the French Ball, and all kinds of social political organization balls and she has led the Grand March at the "Vesper" with Alderman Guin- ness and took the first prize — a gold jewelry case. And there is more champagne than at Mrs. Carter's swarees. Miss Harriet talks to her as if all she could possibly do is to play old maid and read the " Bessy Books," whereas Evelyn belongs to two bridge clubs and reads all the latest trash. Just [72 ] ON SERVANTS IN GENERAL now she is on Bernard Shaw, which she says is too clever for anything, and that Mrs. Carter never heard of him or if she has she probably thinks he is the Mr. Shaw who was Secretary of the Treasury. But of course very few servants are as smart, or as well educated or has as good a time as Evelyn. We read the papers and know as much of what is going on as anyone. In our kitchen for example we subscribe to some of the new weeklies and all the month-old magazines come downstairs regular. There is a great deal of reading done, the only objection I have being that the novels which the girls bring down from hupstairs is most of them improper and not fit to read. But they hide them and take them up to their rooms. Now that is as to ignorance, but the most an- noying thing is the idea that the servants is not respectable. It is enough to make you boil. Every time anyone wants to go out for an evening I can see that the housekeeper thinks that she is going to perdition. So does Mrs. [73] THE BUTLER'S STORY Carter if she knows about it. Where do they think we go ? Well, if an employer had the in- terest to find out he would discover that the only place most servants can go is to call on other servants at some other house, and that is poor fun, as may be imagined. For most of them cannot afford to go to the theatre and there are not so many dances as you would think. So if a girl goes out for an evening she will mostly go to see some other girl. Now she has either got to visit her in the laundry or the kitchen or go up to her room, which is generally dismal and too cold, so it ends orf in the kitchen. She sits in her hat by the servants' table while her friend gets her a cup of tea and a cookie or a piece of cake and they talk about the new dress she is having made for her out of the material her folks sent out to her from the old country. Well, the cook is there pottering round the stove and most of the other servants is either there or rushing in and out, and there is a lot of noise and so she goes home in harf an hour or so and that is the end of it. [74] ON SERVANTS IN GENERAL Now, if she is lucky, one of her friends may invite her to the theatre, but as no one likes to go in a cheap way they go where they can get the best there is for their money — say to a vaude- ville, instead of sitting in the gallery at a big theatre. Most of the girls I know go with other girls and take supper in some restaurant on Sixth Avenue and then take in the show. I suppose their superiors imagine they are indulg- ing in all kinds of vice, but I know when I took Eliza to a vaudeville we went first to a lunch room and had coffee and scrambled eggs. Most of the girls, contrary to popular belief, have no followers hanging round, because most of them would not marry if they could. You would be surprised at the horrer most servants have for matrimony, for most of them is country girls from Germany or England or Scandinavia, where they have lived in the open air and had plenty to eat and a good-sized farmhouse to live in. They could not stand living in a three- room flat in a tenement house with a lot of children and no fresh atmosphere, and they look [75 J THE BUTLER'S STORY down on any woman who is fool enough to do it. The cleverest girl I know is a Swede. She is a second parlor maid and her father is a stock farmer outside of Stockholm and is quite pros- perous. She came over because she had heard such wonderful stories about America, and she has one brother who is an engineer and another who is mate on a ocean liner. She earns twenty- five a month and she would laugh in your face if you asked her to marry you. She is in ser- vice because she is wise enough to know that it is easy money and she gets a comfortable home thrown in. She has made a scientifick study of it and spends all her money in taking night courses in massage, hair-dressing and cooking. Now she has just one ambition in life and that is to lay by enough money sooner or later so as to be independent in her old age. That is a orful thing, isn't it! She is as pretty as can be and I have no doubt Mrs. Carter thinks she has a dozen men arfter her all the time, but Olga is only looking to earn her living and be indepen- dent. By and by she will hire a house, may be, [76] ON SERVANTS IN GENERAL and take boarders. Well, she has no use for men and indeed she is too intelligent and good looking for most of the ones that come to the kitchen. I will wager a good deal that Mrs. Carter's mother was less of a lady than my aunt Jane at Wapping- on-Velly, and did not Lord Craven's great grand- father marry a dairymaid ? The surprising thing is that the girls are as nice, and decent as they are, for if a girl wants to be honest when she is in service she has got to be ready to lose her situation any day for the sake of her soul. For if a man servant speaks to her as he ought not to and she cannot stop him and she tells her mistress, the man makes up a story a great deal worse and says that it was the girl and not he and that she is trying to lose him his place because he would not pay attention to her, just like Potiphar's wife. So all an honest girl can do is to give notice and try her luck somewhere else. A great deal of talk among people who em- ploy servants is pure ignorance. One often hears a lady say at table. THE BUTLER'S STORY "O, I dare say my servants behave orful, but I haven't time to bother with them. Their morals is their own concern so long as they keep them to themselves." And I have frequent wanted to say : "Excuse me, madam, but if you think there is less self-respect below stairs than above you are very much mistaken, and as for morals you will find quite as many in your own kitchen as in your drawring-room after dinner," which is true, for I have been in service twenty years and I never yet heard at the servants' table anything approaching the talk at a swell dinner, which I have served not a few. People in service are just like people anywhere else, and, if you think a minute, you will see that if a lot of strange ladies and gentlemen met in a railroad station and had to eat at the same table they would have as good manners as they knew how and talk agreeable. Now where is the difference ? The people in service are all on a journey through life to better theirselves and come and go and are always changing, and [78] ON SERVANTS IN GENERAL when they sit down to eat together they put their best feet forwards and talk Hke anybody else. Each one is different, and some is hard-working and some is loafers, and some is intelligent and some is stoopid, and some is nice and some is not, but the ones that are not pretend to be, just like the people in society do, and each one wants to make the best impression he or she can, so that apart from the mixture of languages and the un- cultivated manner of speech of many the servants' table is very much like the dinners at a boarding- house. In fact, there is much more religion in the kitchen than anywhere else, for although I regret to say it I have not met in society many people that, apart from giving away money, are religious. They have enough religion to scare them, but not enough to comfort them. For who are the servants ? Take our own house. There is Denis Darroq who is a high- class Frenchman and a student, like myself, of literature. His assistants are serious, well-edu- cated, respectable married men. The kitchen maid is a Swedish girl who used to work on a [79] THE BUTLER'S STORY farm and is very jolly and nice. Of my four second men, one was a gardener who lost his health and had to work in the house and who is so religious (being Scotch) that he is a bore. One is a young fellow just married with a little baby. Another used to be with Mr. Amos's father before he failed, and the fourth is a nephew of my Aunt Jane on her husband's side from Wapping-on-Velly. The pantry maid is a veterinary's daughter who has to work that hard she goes to bed as soon as the dishes is cleaned up. If I should go over the men and girls in our house and tell Mrs. Carter how hard they work and wot they do with their money she would not believe me, for there is James who sends twenty dollars every month to his old mother in York- shire, and Olga who puts hers in the bank to buy a annuity, and Eliza who helps take care of her grandmother and grandfather in the Senile Home, and Evelyn who is sending her sister to the High School and then to College, and Aunty Robinson who spends harf the money that Mr. [80] ON SERVANTS IN GENERAL Carter gives her on other people. And for that matter, as I have no father or mother and there is no one to look out for my Aunt Jane, I send a draft to Wapping-on-Velly regular every month and once in a while I give a little away. And it cost me thirty-five dollars to get Eliza away from Mr. Tom, but if that is all it cost it is cheap enough. And when we seem stoopid and careless and indifferent (because we do not know how else to act) people should remember that arfter all there is not so much in life to make it merry and that most of us has only a dreary old age of poverty to look forward to without wife or hus- band or children and perhaps only the work- house, and they should be careful how they as- sume that because people are in service they are immoral and unrespectable, when if they only knew they would find that all we are trying to do is to keep from becoming a charge upon our relatives and that the only pleasure we get is a littJe dancing. And when I hear some ladies casting their [8i ] THE BUTLER'S STORY aspersions on the girls in service I would like to ask the one without sin to cast the first stone, for there is as much decency and kindHness below stairs as above. And whenever a nice young fellow asks one of our girls to a ball I am glad to see her go, for dancing is almost the only pleasure they get, poor things, and most of them have to dance together for lack of partners, and I remember when I took Olga to the Scandina- vian^ ball as a sailor boy she had me all over the hall for she had forgotten how to dance like a woman. And sometimes when I go hupstairs and meet the little kitchen maid dragging up in her best clothes arfter being out sitting in some kitchen for a good time, I think of how far from home she is and everybody she loves and how presently she will be getting down on her knees in her cold little room all by herself and praying God to look arfter her and I smile to her and bid her "Good-night" and say to myself, so she will not hear, "God bless you!" [82] IV GETTING IN ON "THE GROUND FLOOR" I HAVE always wondered why there was so much more money here than in England, for there is no doubt about it at all especially in New York. Over there almost any one will tell you how poor he is and the greatest lords will take time and trouble to figure out how to save a little, but if anybody tries to save anything in New York they think he is mean, and probably he is with money so easy to get. In the first place most of the gentlemen are stock-brokers and the first thing any one says on his arrival is "How is the market.?" and "Wot about Steel common ?" For a long time there was a joke that everybody got orf that came into the house which was that "Steel preferred maketh the [83] THE BUTLER'S STORY heart sick." To understand it you have to be familiar with the Scriptures, but there is one thing and that is that except when they are at home stock-brokers are the joUiest lot of men you ever saw. I have seen millions made and lost right while I was passing the roast, as it were. The curious thing is that men who talk about millions as if they were nothing will work a whole lot to get a hundred dollars. Mr. Amos says that the business of stock- brokers is to induce people to sell wot they have not got in order to purchase that which they have not the money to pay for. Anyhow they are always on the job and I have seen some of them take orders for stocks right at Mrs. Car- ter's table. A stock-broker is always glad to see anybody, or to take a drink, or a hand at cards, or give you a cigar. There was a member of a Wall Street firm who offered me fifty dollars if I would change his room at The Beeches, so as to be next to a big trader from Chicago. Well, of course I couldn't do it and I was sur- prised he should ask me, but that night for a [84] GETTING IN ON "THE GROUND FLOOR" fact he got into that very room by mistake and before he got out the valet says he sold the Chicago man five thousand shares of Rubber. James says if you buy Rubber you may get wiped out and that Baking Powder is bound to rise. He thinks he is witty but I have an idea some one told it to him. Well, to hear most people talk you would imagine that they had all been born multi- miUionaires. They all know just wot Congress is going to do and where John W. Gates is spending Sunday and it is merely a question which one of a hundred sure things they will put each other into. The funny part of it is that although none of them believe the things they say themselves they all believe a part of wot the others tell them. There is a herd of deers up at the Zoo where I sometimes go with Eliza on Sunday and stock-brokers are just like that. Maybe a little boy will throw an empty bag over the fence and they will all run and try to gobble it up, and again if some one chucks in something real to eat they will not look at it [85] THE BUTLER'S STORY at all. Sometimes they will stand with their ears pricked up thinking they hear something and then away they all go as if to see which can hide first. Mr. Carter is a genius at making money. He is a smooth talker and he looks so innocent you would think it was a shame to take his money. I have heard that lots of people took up with Mr. Carter because they thought he was easy and they hang on to him now because they found he could give them points on how to get it out of other people. I think Mr. Carter is honest as judged by Wall Street standards, but the un- fortunate part of that business is that every time anybody makes a dollar some one else has to lose it. The other night Mr. Carter had a dinner for some friends— all gentlemen, and a great many of them on Wall Street. There were some others including Mr. Amos and it was to meet Mr. O'Connor the great traction and subway man, and Mr. Carter said he wanted Mr. Amos to give it tone. Well, I was kept busy all the [86 J GETTING IN ON "THE GROUND FLOOR" morning ordering all kinds of extra things from the victualler and Mr. Carter spent an hour with me picking out the wines himself. Mr. O'Connor came early and I showed him into the library and he and Mr. Carter worked for some time at the little desk by the window. Then they had whisky and soda and lounged around in front of the fire. Mr. O'Connor is jolly looking like Mr. Carter, only he is very much fatter. He looks as if everything agreed well with him and it is quite hard to tell where his neck leaves orf and his head begins, but his voice is as soft and gentle as a sucking dove and he has a way of saying things that makes them seem wonderful and mysterious. When I came in to take the glasses he was just saying to Mr. Carter: " There is just enough there to make the thing a cinch," he says. "No one can deny that it has possibilities. We have got sixty thousand now and we could even afford to buy forty more to give it a start and help it along," he says. [87] THE BUTLER'S STORY "It looks good to me, Charley," says Mr. Carter and they shook hands on it. The dinner was a great affair and the gentle- men all came in automobiles except Mr. Amos. There were three bank presidents, and one president of a trust company, and two Supreme Court judges, and a leader of Tammany Hall and a number of Wall Street or as we would say " City " gentlemen. They were all the kind that are let in on the ground floor of everything and this was to be a sort of "letting-in" party. As fast as they came in they was each introduced to Mr. O'Connor and then Mr. Carter took them over and gave them a cocktail. It was five and forty minutes arfter eight before the two dozen of them went in to dihner and I had poured sixty-one cocktails by actual count, so that everybody was having a fine time and all had become great friends. The judges especially thought Mr. O'Connor was fine and got on each side of him. Of course we had sherry and white wine right orf together with whisky, and the champagne was served with the fish. By the [88] GETTING IN ON "THE GROUND FLOOR" time the ontray was served there was a spirit of confidence and affection hanging over the table like a benediction. Mr. Carter had not said the dinner was in honor of Mr. O'Connor but everybody seemed to think he was the most dis- tinguished man there and finally some one pro- posed his health and they all drank it most en- thusiastic. Then one of the judges got up and said as how it was a great pleasure to meet one who held the balance of power in the financial world and could buy up kings and principalities as if they was chocolate eclairs and a lot of stuff about the duty of the courts to preserve the stability of economic conditions and not to legis- late and wot a sin it was for any man to try and stretch the Constitution of the United States, so that Mr. O'Connor was deeply touched and made a very solemn speech about the danger of disturbing the country's prosperity and so forth, and then he changed his manner and told a funny story about a cow that made everybody nearly die laughing. Well, pretty soon one of the Wall Street gentlemen hollered across the [89] THE BUTLER'S STORY table at Mr. O'Connor to know if there was anything good that he knew about, and every- body stopped talking on the instant so you could hear a pin drop and James sneaked up and stood right behind Mr. O'Connor's chair. "Ah!" he says, "Mr. Skinner, if I knew of anything good I would be a rich man myself!" Well, at that everybody laughed a lot because they knew Mr. O'Connor was busting with money. "There is one thing I make it a rule never to do," he continues, "and that is to advise 2i friend to buy or sell a stock, and I feel that we are all friends here," he says. " I never took a tip and I never gave one. When / buy a stock," he says, "it is because I have made a thorough study of it as a business proposition from the ground up. If the value ain't there I don't touch it. If the value is there I study the probable future condi- tions. If there is anything I deprecate," he says, "it is stock gambhng." Well, the gentlemen hadn't expected just that but they applauded wot he said and I could see [90 J GETTING IN ON "THE GROUND FLOOR" they all wanted to find out wot he had looked into "as a business proposition." So there was general conversation for a while and then some- body asked wot Mr. O'Connor thought of "Chicle." Mr. O'Connor said he thought Chicle was fine, and that it would stick, and Mr. Amos added that it was a easily digestible se- curity. Well, arfter that they asked him about all sorts of things but he put them orf and talked about politics and how the President was a menace to Wall Street and he was as mum as an oyster, but as it got toward time for desert everybody, and especially the judges, got to pressing him for information all at once and he sort of yielded as if he was going to tell them something and then he stopped and they all looked fearfully disappointed and Mr. Carter shouted, "O go on, Charley, wot is it ?" "Yes, yes!" they all says, "Tell us wot it is, Mr. O'Connor." "Well," he says, "I have looked into one property recently that I think well of and that is Toledo Tube. I think it has a great future. [91 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY There is a city of three hundred thousand in- habitants with most rudimentary facilities for transportation," he says. "The tube is most dug, and the rolling stock is all purchased, and they will have trains in operation in a few weeks. They are certain to pay six per cent, and the stock is selling around forty. It looks good to me. With the natural growth of the city it will become a great property." So they asked him more about it and he went on giving figures and percentages, and to tell about deprecation and stinking funds, and all that, and then he shuts up like a clam and wouldn't say anything more about it at all, and Mr. Carter said it was time to smoke and we might as well go into the picture gallery, which they did most reluctant. There is a big picture over the fireplace there that Mr. Carter had painted by a famous artist for a great lot of money and as I was bringing in the coffee he was pointing it out to one of the judges and telling him about it. It is a picture of a group of ladies and gentlemen in a forest [92] GETTING IN ON "THE GROUND FLOOR" and is quite pretty and dreamy and there is a fool in parti-colored raiment, so Mr. Carter he waves his hand up toward it and says careless- like: "There is a little thing I had done to order," he says. "By Abby," says he. "Ah, indeed!" says the judge putting on his glasses. "Wot is it?" he says. "A scene from Shakespeare," says Mr. Carter. "Ah, indeed!" says the judge. "Wot par- ticular play does it represent?" Then Mr. Carter put his hand in his trousers pocket and screwed up his mouth and hesitated quite a while, and then he says: "It is a scene from Shakespeare," he says, " But I'll be hanged if I remember which play it is or wot it is about." Well, the judge he didn't say anything, but he reached over and began to drink his coffee and pretty soon one of the judges proposed a game of cards, so I had the tables brought in and they got up a game of poker. Mr. O'Connor didn't [93 ] The BUTLER'S STORY play but sat in front of the fire with a group of City gentlemen and when I served the liqueurs I heard him talking about Toledo Tube again. Now I had been keeping my ears open you may be sure and when I heard wot a fine prop- erty it was and how much confidence Mr. O'Connor had in it I made up my mind that I would not let the grass grow under my feet either. "Here is my chance," I says to myself, "to get my publick-house," I says. Well, the party was a late one and I was that sleepy I could have dropped orf standing up, but finally they all went and I closed up the house. Next morning Mr. Carter had his breakfast served hupstairs and I slipped out as soon as I could and went to the bank where I had de- posited my savings and got them out which was five hundred dollars in all. I asked the banker's dark where one could buy stocks and he referred me to a place just around the comer near by. I had never been to a broker's office before and [94] GETTING IN ON "THE GROUND FLOOR" I was quite excited when I opened the door and stepped in. It was about five and forty minutes arfter nine o'clock and the place was quite empty except for a small boy cleaning up the floor and a young gentleman smoking with his feet up on the desk and reading of a newspaper. When he saw me he swings his feet down and gets up very polite and says: "Good-morning, sir, wot can I do for you?" Then a queer look came over his face and he sort of stammered and I says: "I want to purchase some stocks," I says. "O, you do!" he says, in quite a diff^erent tone. "By the way," he says, "Wot is your name.?" "Peter Ridges," I says, "And I am employed by Mr. Carter," I says. "O ho!" he laughs, "So that is it! Don't you remember me .?" he says, "I'm Mr. Williams." Then I remembered him at once for being a gentleman that often called at the house to ask for Miss Patricia but I had been so excited I had not recalled him at first. [95] THE BUTLER'S STORY "Certainly, sir," I says. "Of course I do, and I am glad to find some one I know, sir, for I never tried to buy any stocks before." "Well, why do you want to buy em now?" he says, quite interested. "I have some information," I says, "that I think is valuable." "Don't say!" he says. "Sit down won't you and have a cigar.'"' and he takes out a box of Invincibles and hands em to me. Now I had never sat in a gentleman's presence before except Mr. Amos, but I thought of my five hundred dollars and made up my mind that if Mr. Williams asked me to I might as well do it and take the cigar besides which I did. So Mr. Williams sat down too and just then a little machine like a glass beehive began to tick and write something on a piece of ribbing paper and he says: "They're orf," he says, "Wot are you going to buy.?" "'Toledo Tube,' sir," I says. "'Toledo Tube'!" he says. [96] GETTING IN ON "THE GROUND FLOOR" "Yes," I says, "I understand it is a very good proposition," I says. "Who told you ?" he asks. "Mr. O'Connor," I says, "But I merely hap- pened to overhear wot he told a party of gentle- men." "Well, that sounds pretty good to me," says Mr. Williams when I got through telling him about it. "How much do you want to buy ?" "All I can," I says, "for five hundred dol- lars.' "That would be fifty shares ordinarily," he says, " But I will give you a special rate at five points margin and you can buy a hundred," he says. So I said thank-you and he got up and looked at the ribbing paper in the glass beehive and says: "Jumping Jerusalem!" he says. "'Toledo Tube* opened at 47 and has gone up four points on sales of twenty-five hundred shares. If you are going to buy you had better buy quick." So I says go ahead and Mr. Williams wem [973 THE BUTLER'S STORY over to a telephone and told some one down town to buy a hundred "T. T." at the market. In the meantime the machine said it had gone up another point and then Mr. WilHams says: "There! There are your hundred shares just come out on the tape at 52." Then he whispered something to the orfice boy who ran out as fast as he could without his hat, and then he called the man up on the tele- phone again and told him to buy a thousand more. "That is not for me, is it?" I says. "O, no," he says. "That is for another cus- tomer," he says. So I sat there smoking and wondering how much I would make and pretty soon the orfice boy came in and arfter a while a stout gentleman in a fur coat. "This is our Mr. Walker," says Mr. Williams. " Mr. Walker, I want you to know Mr. Ridges, a new customer of the house," he says. So we shook hands and Mr. Walker passed me the weather and then he sat down at a desk [98] GETTING IN ON "THE GROUND FLOOR" and began calling up a lot of people on the tele- phone. Every once in a while he would speak to Mr. Williams and Mr. Williams would call up the man down town and order more "T. T." "This 'T. T.' is a great thing," he says, "We have just had some special information about it," he says, "which entirely corroborates you," he says. Well, I stayed just to see how fast it would go up and about every third thing on the ribbing was "T. T.," a hundred, or five hundred, or a thousand shares, and once somebody bought five thousand, and it kept going up and up and when it got to 59 Mr. Williams says, says he: "I congratulate you," he says. "You have made seven hundred dollars." My heart nearly stopped for I had no idea you could make money that fast, so I says: "Do you think I had better sell, now.?" I says. "Well," he says, "You can do as you like, but my information is that it is going to par." [99] THE BUTLER'S STORY "How high is that?" I says. "To 100," he says. "And how much would I make in that case ?" I says. "Four thousand eight hundred dollars," he says. My eye! But I nearly dropped, I was that astonished. "Do you think I can make all that?" I says. "Why not ?" he says. "If it's good for any- thing it's worth that!" By that time "T. T." was up to 63, and the orfice was beginning to fill up with a great many young gentlemen some of which I had seen be- fore at our house. Mr. Williams whispered to all of them and most of them spoke to me and asked me how I was most friendly, and by and by Mr. Walker invited me to come into his back orfice and put a chair by his desk for me and closed the door and gave me another cigar, and says: "I do not suppose you have considered the [ 100 ] m GETTING IN ON "THE GROUND FLOOR" matter," he says, "But we might make an ar- rangement profitable to us both," he says. "How is that, sir?" I says. "Why, you are by way of getting very im- portant information frequent," he says, "With- out any trouble to yourself," he says, "and if you should care to do so we might undertake joint operations and we would be pleased to give you a share in the result," he says, "without cost or risk to yourself" "You mean that I should tell you anything that I hear Mr. Carter say ?" I says. "To put it bluntly, yes," he says. Then see- ing that I looked surprised, he added: "You do not have to decide now," he says. "Think it over. I am confident it would be well worth your while," he says. "I am glad to have met you!" and he held out his hand which I am ashamed to say I took. I went back to the front room and the crowd there was getting bigger and bigger every minute and it seemed as if every young man I had ever seen was in there buying "T. T." which was now [lOl] THE BUTLER'S STORY up in the seventies. There was a sort of hush when I came in and then the noise got louder and louder, and as I had begun to feel very awkward and that I had made a mistake and done harm to Mr. Carter, I put on my hat and went out. Just as I reached the front of the steps I ran plump into Mr. Amos who was coming out of the Century Club. There was nothing to do so I says: "Good-morning." And he says." "Good-morning, Ridges," very much sur- prised. Then he looks up at the door and sees the sign "Williams & Walker" and looks very sharp at me and says: "Well," says he, "Wot were you doing in that bucket shop.?" he says. "Bucket shop ?" says I feeling very guilty. "Yes, bucket shop," says he. "Wot business have you in there ? You a respectable butler," he says. Well you may be sure I was embarrassed and I hardly knew wot to do, but I says perfectly frank: [ 102 ] GETTING IN ON "THE GROUND FLOOR" "I have been buying a hundred shares of 'Toledo Tube'" I says. "O, Ridges!" he says. "Et tu Brute!" "Wot is that?" I says. "It is too brutal!" he says and then he laughs. "My dear old Ridges," he says, "why do you throw away your money like that.?" he says. " I have not thrown it away," I says, " I have made nearly two thousand dollars already," I says. He looked at me in rather a queer way and I would have given the money not to have had him see me, but then his look changed and he took me by the arm and led me along to where there was a cafe. So we went and sat down at a little table and Mr. Amos ordered two bottles of beer and asked me to tell him all about it, and I told him. "Dear me!" he says, "To think that you like the others should have been bitten by the Tarantula of Wall Street. Now, are you going to give information to these pirates ?" he says. "Do you think it would be right, sir ?" I asks. [ 103 J THE BUTLER'S STORY "Do you, Ridges?" he replies. "Certainly not," I says. "Why do you ask me.?" I says. Then a smile came over his face and he says, "I beg your pardon. Ridges! I always knew you were a gentleman." Then he hesitated. "The first thing is for you to get your money out as fast as you can," he says. "You had better go right back and sell your stock. I will wait for you and make sure that the wolves do not tear you to pieces," he says. So we walked back and I went in and every- body wanted to know if I had heard anything new, but I said no I simply thought I would make sure of my profits. "Better not," says Mr. Walker. "Why with your profits you can carry five hundred shares and make a thousand dollars every time 'T. T.' goes up two points." Well for a minute I wanted to do it. "Why not buy four hundred shares more?" says he. "All you will have to do is to leave [ 104 ] GETTING IN ON "THE GROUND FLOOR" your five hundred dollars. Think of it! Five hundred shares when you started with five hundred dollars only two hours ago!" But I thought of Mr. Amos and I had a feel- ing that it was not right to make so much money so quick anyhow, and the cigars had made my head ache and I says: "No, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. You can sell my hundred shares." So Mr. Williams sold them at 72 and gave me a cheque for $i<)TS ^"'^ ^ 5°° dollars back which he had put in his pocket. Just then a young gentleman named Potts who was stand- ing by the glass beehive says: "Wot's this! Look here boys, there is some- thing the matter with 'T. T.'" They all made a rush for the ribbing and he began to shout: "Ten thousand at 71 ! Five thousand at 70 J! Ten thousand at 70J, 500 at a quarter, one thousand at 70!" "Let me get at that telephone!" yells Mr. Wil- liams. "Here Central give me 1205 Broadway!" [ 105 1 THE BUTLER'S STORY "Ten thousand at 69!" exclaims Mr. Potts. "Say something is happening down there all right — ^whew! Ten thousand at 67 J. This is too much for me! I'm going to get out. Wil- liams sell me 500 at the market!" "Sell me a thousand!" says another. "And my five thousand!" cries another, very pale. "Now keep your shirt on!" growls Mr. Wil- liams. "I'm giving the orders as fast as I can, but some of you fellers ought to hang on. Why we are just helping to break the market!" "All we want is our money!" shouts Potts. "I believe we've been sold out!" says Walker. " Fake information ! " cries Potts. " Where is this man that told you about it ?" "Yes," yells Walker. "Here you, is this a put up game?" Well I did not know wot it all meant but they seemed so shirty I thought I had better get out rapid which I did. Mr. Amos was waiting on the corner and when I told him about it he laughed until he cried. [106] GETTING IN ON "THE GROUND FLOOR" "You're a lucky dog, Ridges!" he says. "Why, don't you suppose I would have been rich years ago if tips would have done it!" "Why, wot do you mean?" I says. "Don't you think 'T. T.' is a good stock?" "I don't know and I don't care," he says. "But Mr. O'Connor " I says. "O'Connor! "he says, " O'Connor ! I wouldn't trust him with a cracked nickel," he says. Well I was that shocked I couldn't speak for a whole minute. Finally I says: "But why does Mr. Carter have him to din- ner, then ?" "Give it up," he says. "Perhaps hei likes him." By that time we were at the bank and Mr. Amos went in with me while I deposited my cheque for J^I975, and as he knew the dark he asked him wot was the news and the dark said O nothing, except there was tremendous dealings in Toledo Tube which jumped from 47 to 72 and then dropped way down to twenty-some- thing. [ 107 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY "No one knows wot to make of it," he says. So I says good-bye to Mr. Amos and feeling harf ashamed and harf glad and terrible excited I went back to the house and attended to setting the table for lunch and while I was in the dining room Miss Patricia asked me to telephone for some flowers. Now Mr. Carter has an exten- sion in his room and can call up Central hisself and when I took down the receiver he was talk- ing to some one at the other end and I heard him say: " Get rid of it ? I should say we did ! Some fool began to buy at ten o'clock and we unloaded all the way up to sixty-nine. Even then it kept on moving up and I'm surprised it didn't go to par. The man on the other end said that was great and he congratulated him to be sure and they both said "so-long and see you to-morrow," and hung up. Then I ordered the flowers and when lunch was served you could see something wonderful had occurred because Miss Harriet [ io8 ] GETTING IN ON "THE GROUND FLOOR" was in great spirits and said how she was going to give another ball and when James dropped the Dresden china fruit plate that cost so much Mr. Carter just laughed and said it was all right and to order harf a dozen more, and arfter lunch he gave me ten dollars and says tljat the dinner last night was fine and served beautiful. All that afternoon I was in a state of excite- ment and nothing I ate seemed to agree with me which is very unusual, but there was no one to talk to or to tell about it and I began to feel lonely and sort of miserable. I had made two thousand dollars but I felt as if I had stolen something and just to cheer myself up I asked Eliza to go to the theatre with me, for the family was going out to Sherry's to have wot Mr. Carter calls a "bust." But I was so glum that Eliza kept asking me wot was the matter and saying I had better take some Cod Liver Oil and go to bed, but it was a very funny play and I got to laughing and forgot all about the money for there was a fellow on the stage the rummiest [ 109 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY looking guy you ever saw and he would start and fall all over the table and light on his head and not mind it at all, and then he would stand on a chair and fall orf and gets his legs caught in the chair's legs until you would have died laughing. Well, I began to feel better and when that was over the page came out with a sign "Williams & Walker." "My eye!" I says under my breath. And Eliza says, " Wot is it ? Have you got a pain?" And I says, no it is nothing at all, and not to mind me. But it did seem queer that they should have that name and I thought maybe I was a little orf my head, and in a minute the curtain went up and wot should it be but two niggers who sang and played most beautiful. It was enough to make you cry and Eliza did cry a little, so I took hold of her hand and she did not draw it away and I felt more like myself. In the intermission there was a tired looking man just in front that took out and read a news- [ no] GETTING IN ON "THE GROtJND FLOOR" paper with a bald head and right at the top was a big head line: BIG SLUMP IN "T. T." Small Panic on Stock Exchange Williams & Walker Suspend A sort of chill ran over me and I says : "I beg pardon, sir, would you mind letting me glance at that a minute?" So he says no, only to let him have it back. And I took it and read: Among those who suffered was the firm of Williams & Walker, who do an uptown business in the neigh- borhood of the Century and other clubs. Acting on what they supposed was reliable information the firm plunged heavily and induced many of their customers to do the same. When the bottom dropped out of the market they were many thousand shares long of the stock and were obliged to announce their suspen- sion at the close of the day. Their liabilities are very large and their assets are said to be practically nothing. Then I realized how I was the unconscious instrument of Providence in putting a stop to [ III ] THE BUTLER'S STORY such gambling operations and how my check was worthless. But for all that I had lost the two thousand dollars I felt happier than I had all that day, and I gave the man back his paper and told Eliza all about it, but I am sure she was glad about the money for she says: "Peter, I'm glad they failed!" And I says to myself: "Ridges," I says, "high finance is not for you!" [112] ON MONEY AND HAPPINESS BEING a plain serving man I make no es- pecial pretensions to morality but do my duty in that state of life it has pleased God to call me simple as I see it, my genius lying more particular in the way of literature. In things spiritual I bow to my pastors and masters, but in the things of this world I claim to have both experience and observation and I believe if some day I could have a good talk with Mrs. Carter I could teach her something. I have pondered oft on the subject of how much pleasure she and the people round her really get out of life. When you come down to it there are only three kinds of pleasure, as must appear to every- body. In the first place eating is one kind of pleasure, and sitting down arfter you have been [ 113 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY standing up is another (and to go to bed arfter a hard day's work is the same sort), and to say a kind word to a fellow servant or help him along is a third. Now these is all different kinds of pleasure. In the first you get something; in the last you give something; and in the second you just get relief. If you try you can put every kind of pleasure there is into one of these three classes, and by way of keeping cheerful I have often compared my own lot in life with Mr. and Mrs. Carter's on just this basis. For example, rest. Now sleep is a pleasure and so is sitting down and doing nothing and I am glad enough to rest my back against the step ladder in the pantry arfter dinner, and I drop orf to sleep as soon as I get into bed, to say nothing of snoring which James accuses me of and which I say is a slander but cannot prove it. But Mr. and Mrs. Carter never want to sit down and if they set for any length of time is nervous and especial Miss Harriet. She is always figetting around and jumping up and down and hopping orf somewhere just because [ 114] ON MONEY AND HAPPINESS she never does anything or takes any exercise, and so is her mother although more fat. And none of them can sleep, for they are always com- plaining about wot miserable nights they have had. And, although Mr. Carter lies out on his sofa arfter dinner and sighs contented as he smokes his big black Havana I know it is only because he thinks it is proper and the right time to smoke and sigh, and he doesn't begin to enjoy it as I do my pipe in the men's sitting room. And it is the same way with holidays and when one has any time orf, for on such occa- sions a serving man is happy to do nothing. One of the chief things that strikes me about the way rich people in America try to enjoy themselves is the trouble they go to to do it. Now you would think if Mr. and Mrs. Carter really liked music they would go to concerts and the opera when they felt like it, but instead they buy a box for an enormous amount of money and go to all the operas that come on fashionable nights whether they like them or not. They do not enjoy music and it is very hard for both of [115] THE BUTLER'S STORY them to pronounce the names of the singers with the right accent, and they are always taking Scotty for Caruso, and for a long time Mrs. Carter thought Cavalery was a man. I have heard Mr. Amos when they were alone for din- ner go on talking a whole lot of rubbish and making up all sorts of queer names and pre- tending they was singers and Mrs. Carter taking it all in serious until he told her, and then she laughed as hard as anybody. There is one thing I like about her and that is she enjoys a joke on herself as much as anybody. It is the great cross of Mrs. Carter's Hfe trying to dispose of her box the nights she can't go, for of course she wants fashionable people to sit in it when she isn't there and the fashionable peo- ple almost always are engaged. I have known her to send the tickets to her box to seventeen different families before she could get anyone to take it, and each time when it came back with a polite note you could have thought she would die, and she can never get anybody to take it on Saturday nights. [ ii6] ON MONEY AND HAPPINESS From all I can see the opera is a pretty sad affair anj^way. Mr. Amos goes almost every night but he loves music and knows almost all of the operas by heart, so he is always glad to sit with Mrs. Carter and she gets him to tell her wot it is all about. Wot Mr. and Mrs. Carter really like are the comic operas, and they are glad when the spring comes and it is proper for them to go. Mrs. Carter is always repeating the jokes she hears there and she thinks Mr. Weber and Mr. Fields are the funniest men she ever saw. She says it makes her "full of laugh." So I think it is perfectly fair to count out en- tirely owning a opera box as a method of enjoy- ing one's self except in so far as it is a satisfaction to have your name printed on the program. Now as for dinner parties I know for a fact that Mrs. Carter gets no fun out of them at all. It is one thing to have a big party of distinguished and jolly people like Lord Craven used to have who all know one another and make a lark of it and it is quite another to ask a whole lot of people you only know a very little and are trying [ "7] THE BUTLER'S STORY to know better than they want you to. All of Mrs. Carter's dinners cost a heap of money and the table is always banked up with orchids and the service is all gold plate, but they are always solemn like a funeral and if any one laughed out loud everybody would be shocked. Those are the times Mrs. Carter is so stiff and correct that she acts as if it was a sin to cough and Mr. Amos is the only one who is not afraid of her. I re- member one time we had ouvrers o pom which is eggs poached inside of baked potatoes that has had the inside taken out and fixed up again and put back, and one young gentleman thought he would be funny and says to Mrs. Carter: " Mrs. Carter, it looks as if your chickens had got into the potato patch," he says. And everybody sort of looked orrified and Mrs. Carter seemed very much embarrassed and says: "Dear me," she says, "I really do not bother myself with such matters," she says, "but my impression is that at The Beeches the hen house is a long way from the garden." So the young man felt very much humiliated. [ii8] ON MONEY AND HAPPINESS Now the hideous mockery of the dinners is that Mrs. Carter has such a bad digestion that she cannot eat any of them, so it is all lost so far as she is concerned and Miss Harriet as well, for most wot they eat is hot water and pepsin pills, and both of em always have a headache next day on account of the strain of having to be agreeable and talk so loud and the light shining in their eyes. And when they go out to dinner it is exactly the same way, and of course an afternoon tea or ireception is a thousand times worse. Sometimes Mrs. Carter says she wishes she was back in Brooklyn, and Miss Harriet will shudder and exclaim " O mother, I wish you wouldn't say such things!" The steam yacht is worst of all, for everybody but Miss Patricia and Master WiUie are always seasick, and if they go abroad they always take one of the big ocean liners and send the Levi- athian across to meet them. But they only stay a little while and come right back so as to be on hand for the season at Newport. Most of the time the yacht is just lying around in the [119] THE BUTLER'S STORY harbor and Mr. Carter is always worrying his- self to death over the expense. Now I have no prospect of owning a big house or a yacht or a box at the opera or having ser- vants to wait on me, so that I am not discon- tented because I have not got them, and all I want is to lay aside enough so I can buy a pub- lick-house somewhere near Craven Hall and set- tle down for my old age with Aunt Jane. So I am very happy because I have saved enough already so that I can do so in five or six years more. Mr. Amos and I are agreed on this, for we have talked it over that a man's happyness depends on how far he has wot he wants. Now the less you want the more chance there is of having it and so the more likely you are to be happy. There is a little cripple boy who lives in the opposite house and he has never been able to set his foot on the ground, but when he goes out to drive the footman has to carry him out. All the rest of the time he sits by the window in his father's Ubrary and watches the people pass- [ 120 ] ON MONEY AND HAPPINESS ing up and down, and he is so thin and pale it is enough to make your heart ache. Well, Miss Patricia never goes out of the house that she does not wave her hand to him (although she has never met him) and he watches for her every day and smiles and waves back and is always looking for her. And one day I was at the window and I felt so sorry for him I sort of waved too and he nodded right back and smiled, and now I know him very well. It does not cost anything to smile at a little sick boy but every time I do when I go back to work I feel like singing. And he is such a patient little chap that it does you good just to see him sitting there, for if he can be cheerful when he is all hunched up like that you would think anybody else would be ashamed not to be when they have everything in the world like Miss Harriet. Most of the folks who is dissatisfied is fools or worse, and there was a fellow once who got a job as a second man in our house and stayed on for a while that had all kinds of strange ideas. He was all right until he got talking and then [121] THE BUTLER'S STORY he was enough to drive you to drink. Well, one day he didn't polish the teapot to suit and I says to him: " How do you expect to keep a place if you don't do your work any better than that ?" I says. So he sets down the teapot and smiles quite superior and says: "I should have told you before. Ridges," he says, " but this is as good a time as any, that I am not wot I seem," he says. " I am not a ser- vant, but a student of social conditions making a independent investigation," and he gave me a look as if he expected me to fall flat. Well, I didn't know who or wot he was and I cared less, so I says: "Wot has that got to do with your leaving finger marks on the teapot ?" I says. "That is wot you are paid for," I says. And he smiles and says: "You do not understand," he says, "I'm a sociologist," he says, says he, "and I am going to write this all up in a book and expose this orful condition of things," he says. [ 122 ] ON MONEY AND HAPPINESS "Wot rot are you talking?" I says. "Wot orful condition have you found ?" I says. "Why, mine and yours and everybody else," he says. "Here we are obliged to slave for a living vpage amid unsanitary and immoral sur- roundings, while those who enjoy the fruits of our labor are rioting in lugsury, dissipation and drunkenness." He waved his hand and stood up while I backed over toward the sink. "The rich is getting richer," he says, "and the poor is getting poorer," he says. "Do you think so ?" I interrupts. "Well my wages is four sov. a month more than they were ten years ago and three times wot they was in England," I says. "You don't understand," he says, getting all hupset in his speech. "Why should one man ride in his coach," he says, "and have his box at the opera and his yacht," he says, "and an- other have to clean the dishes ? " he says. " It is a fundamental error in the constitution of society," he says. [ 123 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY " I fancy it's because that other man is clever enough or lucky enough to make the money," I says. "Nonsense," he replies. "Look at these people for whom you work — observe how happy they are! How they eat, drink and make merry, while you are bound down to days of misery. Their time is filled with feasting and pleasure while you are mingling your tears with those of your fellow bondsmen." "Well," I says, "the tears I shed wouldn't wet a postage stamp, and I haven't seen any one else shedding tears lately," I says. "Everybody seems pretty contented here. The only misera- ble people in the house," I says, " are the people we are working for and that is their own fault," I says. "I'm perfectly satisfied," I says. He gave me a look of disgust. "Satisfied!" he cries. "Satisfied like the dumb brute that does not know his own wretched lot," he says. "Rise up! Be a man! Cast off your shackles and " "Look here," I says, trying to calm him, [ 124] ON MONEY AND HAPPINESS "Wot is the matter with you? Wot is it you want?" I says. "Want!" he says, "I want to remove the in- equality and injustice in the world. I want the happyness fairly distributed," he says. " But I am happier than Mrs. Carter now," I says, "I don't want her money." "O," he says, "you are a yokel," he says. "It is their power," he says. "It should be wrenched from them." " I don't want any of their power," I says. "You are a bond slave to these rich," he cries. "Well," I says, losing patience, "if you don't like your job go and get one at the same wages elsewhere that you like any better." "That is not the point," he says. "The good things of life are not equally divided," he says. " Why not ? " I says. " Wot are they ? Good health, wholesome food, peaceful rest, and enough work to keep you out of mischief. I admit you haven't got your share of that," I says. " I wouldn't change with any man, least of all a miserable millionaire." [ 125] THE BUTLER'S STORY "Ah!" he says, ignoring my argumentum. " The millionaires ! These people for whom you slave are vulgar hupstarts, cheap parvenoos, un- worthy to eat at the same table with honest menl" " Now see here," I says, getting hot. " Keep your hair on," I says, "and don't call names, for while you are taking their m'oney and eating their bread you had better keep a civil tongue in your head!" "You don't understand," he says, quite red, "I'm not a servant. I am Alan Adair, the sociologist and novelist wot disclosed the fright- ful conditions existing in the candy trade," he says. "I don't care who you are when you are at home or in quod," I says. "Or how many books you have written. If you can't clean a teapot any better than that," I says, "you had better go back to writing," and I sticks it into his hands. "Now you can sit down and rub orf those finger marks or you can go to the house- keeper and get your time and clear out," I says. [126] ON MONEY AND HAPPINESS Well, he was that shirty he threw the cloth on the floor, and went hupstairs and got his bag and left, and that was the last time I ever saw him, but I heard arfterwards he wrote a story telling how badly underpaid servants was, and in wot orful unhealthy conditions they had to work, and how stoopid and immoral they all were. But the truth is they are better paid and keep in better health than any other working people I know, and as for their being stoopid — well — of course there are exceptions. Now as far as I can make out giving a ball is the ultimatum honum of being rich and is ac- cepted as being the greatest pleasure one can give one's self or others in society. So if you want to know just how much real pleasure or happyness money gives to people the way to do is to take one of the things riches can bring and annylize it and find out. A ball costs more, takes more getting ready and is more talked about than anything, so it is fair to take it as a sample. Now how much real pleasure does it give to anybody ? [ 127 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY The last ball Mrs. Carter gave cost over ;^5000 for flowers and the walls was entirely covered with roses and there were summer houses in each corner of the room, and I opened personal nineteen cases of champagne. Wot the favors cost I hate to think of, and when it is all over wot is there left but Mrs. Carter and Miss Harriet wondering whether Mrs. So-and- So really was sick and couldn't come or just nasty and whether it really was a success or not. Generally the best Miss Harriet can say is that she had plenty of partners (which ought to be the case in her own house) and to ask wot any man can see in that Benson girl anyhow. She is always comparing the time she has just had with the time some other girl has had and criti- cising people, and I don't see why if she does not like them she pays out her mother's money to entertain them. And next day everybody is cross except Miss Patricia who is out in the Park riding her horse just as early as usual and as if nothing had happened. Now Mrs. Carter's balls is the principal thing [ 128] ON MONEY AND HAPPINESS she does to have a good time. But if anything is certain in this life it is that she has a miserable time at her own balls. So far as I can see out of the five or six hundred people who come about twenty really enjoy themselves and it costs, I have heard Mr. Carter say, between 12 and ^15,- 000 before it is over, and I should say that the average woman who goes to a ball in New York has a pretty anxious and unpleasant time and a headache next day. But if they want to go it is none of my business. Giving balls may be a recognized form of pleasure but it is in most cases a good deal more like agony. The only ones who are sure to have a good time are the young men who don't dance unless they feel like it and who spend the rest of the time drinking champagne and smoking in the dressing room. And how they roast Mrs. Carter and Miss Har- riet! My eye! It would make them want to go into a monastery if they heard it! The moral of which all is that there are a lot of kinds of pleasure that are really not pleasure at all but only expense and worry. I fancy the only [ 129 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY reason Mrs. Carter wants to give balls is be- cause other swell ladies give them and not be- cause she really likes to. One of the first rules of having a good time is not to try to enjoy your- self doing something you don't like or are not cut out for. Mrs. Carter is more cut out for wearing a gingham apron and making jam. Whenever I go to a ball, which is but seldom, I and the men and girls go to dance and we pay the small price of a ticket and dance until we are tired of it and go home and that is the end of it, but when Mrs. Carter gives a ball there is no end to it at all, for some people decline the invitation and then you would think Mrs. Carter would like to commit murder and Miss Harriet arson. Then there is the greatest ex- citement trying to get the right gentleman to lead the cotillion, for if you do not get the right one in New York it is a terrible fo par, and may be he is sick and don't want to and anyhow the anxiety is orful. Well, then arfter all the money is spent and everything is ready there is the fear lest it will not go orf with just the right kind of [ 130 1 ON MONEY AND HAPPmESS a swing and Mrs. Carter is driving everybody to death till past twelve o'clock until it gets fully started. If you have the idea that people go to balls in New York to have a good time you would only have to go once to change your mind. In the first place nothing in the world is dismaller than a house just before a ball is going to be given in it. All the lights has been lit ever since eight o'clock and the carpet has been laying out across the sidewalk and the wind roaring up through the shaking old awning every time you go to answer the front door. The family scut- tles through their dinner to have a hairdresser do their hair and the florists' men are finishing up the last touches in the ballroom. There are flowers everywhere but everybody looks so dole- ful it might as well be a funeral if you did not know different. Then about ten o'clock the band arrives and sits around and acts bored and as if they wanted to smoke, and the extra hired footmen comes and loiters in the front hall. Everybody has been asked for ten o'clock and [131 ] TIJE BUTLER'S STORY no one is expected until twelve but you have to be ready in case they make a mistake. By ten o'clock you and the other men are all lined up in the front hall, and the bobby from the station house and the carriage men are hanging around the end of the awning chaffing the people that want to peek in. The band tunes up and gives a sample bar or two and then relapses. The maids and valets are dawdling on the staircases, and the caterer and his men have been there since six o'clock raising an orful mess. Well, we crack a few jokes among ourselves for the first harf hour or so and then there is a rustle on the stairs and down comes Mrs. Carter and we all slips up on our feet and act respectful. Usually she is dressed to kill with her hair bulged out behind and in front like a sofa pillow and a white plume with a diamond dandling on top of it in the middle of her head, and she comes strutting along like she was afraid she would break and takes a look around to see everything is all right. "Is everything prepared.?" she says to me. [ 132 ] ON MONEY AND HAPPINESS (She always says is things "prepared" on state occasions.) "Yes, Madam," I says. "Well," she says, "Open that window. I am afraid it is going to be too hot! See to it. Ridges, that the rooms do not get too hot!" she says. "Very good. Madam," I says. Then she takes a peek at the ballroom and says : " I hope you did not put too much wax on the floor," she says. "No, Madam." "What is the matter with that orchestra?" she says. "Why don't it play ?" "I suppose. Madam, they do not think you wish them to play before the people arrive," I says. "Nonsense," she says, "Tell them to play. Wot would anybody think if they came and there wasn't any music?" she says. So I has to go and tell the band to begin. Then Miss Harriet comes down and her mother says: "Harriet, how is my hair?" [ 133 ] THE BUTLER'S STORV "All right," says Harriet. "How is my skirt hanging?" "All right," says her mother. "Do you think Peleas has got it too far up behind ?" she says. "No," answers Miss Harriet, "It is good enough. Does that place show on my neck?" she says. So they keep at it for about harf an hour wondering if they are all right while the band plays and all the men and maids in the halls get sleepy, and about eleven o'clock the first car- riage drives up and there is the greatest excite- ment. Everybody goes ascurrying round and we men all get in line and when I open the door it is only a note from someone who is sorry she can't come. Well, things begin to get slow again. The band keeps on sort of sleepy and all the men is yawning and the family is sitting round, looking bored to death in the drawring room. Every once in a while Mrs. Carter will go to a mirror and fix something and then she will get up and change [ 134 J ON MONEY AND HAPPINESS it back again. It gets to be eleven, and a harf arfter, and five and forty minutes arfter and we are about ready to fall asleep when before you know it someone is standing at the front door trying to get in and there is nobody there to open it. I says "S-sh-sh!" and they all jump into their places and James he scurries up and opens the door and in waddles old lady Gresh- am — ^leastwise that is wot Miss Harriet calls her — and she sails along by us looking very haughty and so on hupstairs before she finds out she is the first one, and then she hangs around in the dressing room feeling of the stuflF the hangings is made of and wondering how much it cost a yard — anyhow that is wot Evelyn says and she knows her of old. In a few minutes more everybody begins streaming in together and the band hits it up lively and the young fellows collect on the landing to see if the girls they is sweet on has got there yet, and one by one the people begin to come down buttoning their gloves and trying to look unconscious. Of course I am standing by the drawring [ 135] THE BUTLER'S STORY room door and as fast as they reach the thresh- old I asks their names and announces them proper and it would make you laugh to see how many of them will blush when their names is called out, but most of them put on plenty of side and sail along quite au naturel, and the dresses beats anything I ever saw in England. Well, there is a great to-do in the room where Mrs. Carter is receiving her guests but it is orful quiet everywhere else because they are all afraid to go into the ballroom and sit there lest no one will ask them to dance, and all the day- butantes get in a clump by one door and keep everybody else out, and the people who do not know anybody go walking around in a circle as if they were particular anxious to find somebody, and now is the time for all the bores to anchor on to other people because there is no chance to get away from them. The crowd in the drawring room gets bigger and bigger and the noise is orful and there is the band playing away like mad and no one dancing and Miss Harriet is nearly crazy and answering "Yes, yes! In- [ 136 ] ON MONEY AND HAPPINESS deed! Is it possible!" to the old codger who is talking to her although she does not hear a word he says. Well, the young men are all up on the landing waiting for things to liven up before they come down, and it looks as if no one was ever going to begin to dance, and just as Miss Harriet is beckoning to me frantic to do something down comes Mr. Amos and I shouts his name and he winks at me as he goes in and says: " Ridges, General Sherman said war was hell, but he should have seen this!" And before you can say Jack Robinson Mr. Amos has Miss Harriet out swinging her around the hall and most of the young girls has squeezed in and begin to take seats and in five minutes more the floor is full of couples, and when Mr. Amos stops another young man wants a chance at Miss Harriet and so he goes and talks to Mrs. Carter and she says: " I don't know how we should get on without you!" And this is where I get a chance to see wot [ 137] THE BUTLER'S STORY kind of chaps some of the young men are who come to our house, for most of them only dance with the girls whose mothers have big houses and can entertain them, and they will walk right by others that they know very well and never look at them. So that some few girls are danc- ing every few minutes and others are not asked to dance at all. Evelyn says she has seen lots of pretty young girls slip out of the ballroom and go hupstairs and sit in the dressing room until it is time for the carriages, and she says she knows some of them are crying although they pretend to be looking at the photographs. Now Mr. Amos makes a business of being nice to everybody and if all the young men were like him every girl would have a good time, but they are not, so a lot of mothers rise up and call him blessed when it is time to go home. But usually by the time the cotillion begins the girls who are not having a good time have sense enough to go away and the crowd thins out and the people that are left really begin to enjoy themselves. And then Mr. Amos dances [ 138] ON MONEY AND HAPPINESS all he wants with Miss Patricia and gives her all his favors. Wot a couple they make to be sure ! How I wish they could hit it orf together, but I see no signs of it although they are the very best of friends. You should see the favors that Mrs. Carter gives at her ball! It really is a sin with all the poverty there is in the world, and yet, as Mr. Amos says, it makes no difference because if she didn't spend it that way she would leave it to lie in the bank. She has gold cigarette cases and opera glasses and gold pencils and jewelled watch fobs and gold headed canes for the men, and parasols and real lace fans and chaty- lanes for the ladies. Most of them cost twenty- five dollars or more apiece and some of them go orf with as many as twenty which is ekal to five months of my wages. Well they keep it up until three o'clock or later and then gradually everybody goes except about six who are bound to stay until the last minute. And then they comes tumbling out of the drawr- ing room and shakes hands with Mrs. Carter [ 139 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY and tells her wot a fine time they have had and the band begins to pack up and wonder if they could have a sandwich and a glass of cham- pagne before they go. The hired footmen hang around hoping that Mr. Carter will do the hand- some thing by them, which he always does, and the maids come down into the pantry to see if they can get some patty foy grass, and there is an orrid smell of tobacco smoke all up the front stairs and on the landings and in the hall, and pieces of tissue paper and withered flowers everywhere to say nothing of broken favors and the young lady whose carriage has not come or got tired of waiting and has to be sent home in a cab. Then Mrs. Carter and Miss Harriet flops down on the sofas and puts their feet up and loosens their dresses, and when the last carriage has gone and only Mr. Amos is left Mr. Carter sends me for cigars and he lights a big one and says : "Thank God that is over!" [ 140 ] VI I TURN DETECTIVE THINGS continued happy at our house for several days arfter that "Toledo Tube" dinner. Mr. Carter said he was going to have a new picture painted to be called "All's Well That Ends Well" or "Fools Rush in Where Hangels Fear to Tread," and Mrs. Carter went down to a jewellery store on Fifth Avenue and bought a pearl necklace for herself and a dia- mond dog collar for Miss Harriet that cost to- gether thirty-five thousand dollars, and when- ever I saw them on their necks I would wonder regular how far I had been unconscious instru- mental in the success of Mr. Carter's coop. But it did not last long. Friday night while the family was at the opera Mr. Tom rang the bell and when he passed me in the hall he looked [ HI ] THE BUTLER'S STORY that white and aggard that I was quite hupset. He saw me fast enough and gave me an ugly look that meant no good. "I'll wait," he says, "until the family comes home," he says. "Bring me some whisky." So I had James serve him in the library and I left him there walking around the room mut- tering to hisself. It was almost quarter arfter twelve when the family returned and when I told Mrs. Carter that Mr. Tom was there she was still so full of her and Miss Harriet's necklace that she couldn't think of anything else and rushed right in to him and shouted : " O Tom ! Have you seen the lovely necklace your father gave me, and the one he gave Har- riet.?" "Very pretty," grunts Mr. Tom. "They cost thirty-five thousand dollars," she says, rather annoyed at his not showing any more enthusiasm. "Sinful waste!" he growls, turning away and repeating, "Thirty-five thousand dollars!" [ 142 1 I TURN DETECTIVE "Wot is the matter, dear?" says his mother, sort of anxious. "Don't you feel well ?" "O, I'm all right," he says, "Only I'm not particularly interested in geegaws," he says. Well, Mrs. Carter was very much put out at the way Mr. Tom spoke to her so she simply walked out of the room without even saying good-night and left her husband with him. Neither of them said anything for some time, except Mr. Tom went on smoking and pouring down whisky and soda. "Wot's the matter with you ?" says his father finally. "If you must know it, I'm cleaned out!" an- swers Mr. Tom very short. "Wot! Again!" says his father. "You promised me on your sacred honor not to touch a card or sell or buy a share of stock!" he says. "Well," says Tom, "the fact is I got a gilt- edged tip to buy Toledo Tube last Wednesday, and the information seemed so good that I just took a chance and bought a thousand shares at 79. You know where it went?" [ H3 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY "Yes," says his father, looking queer. "Where did you get out ?" "At 35," says Tom. "It was at 43 when I put in my order to sell but it was going down so fast that I was lucky to get out when I did. There was some crooked work there, I'll bet!" "How's that!" cries his father getting red. "Wot do you mean by crooked work!" "O, you know as well as I do. Some bunco man just gold-bricked the market, that's all!" Mr. Carter was getting that angry I knew something would happen and happen quick. "Well," he says very sharp, "I suppose you think all you have to do is to come around and get your money back from me! Let me tell you I'll not give you a cent! You have broken your solemn promise and now that you have made your bed you can lie on it!" he says, pounding the arm of the chair. Mr. Tom had grown very white. "You don't mean that you won't help me!" he says, sort of stammering. "I mean just that!" says Mr. Carter. [ 144 ] I TURN DETECTIVE "Then I'm ruined!" gasps Mr. Tom. "Look here," shouts his father, "I think it's about time for a understanding between us two," he says. "I've paid your debts and supported you for the last thirty-five years with hardly a word of thanks. You think you are too good for your father and mother and sister because you have a few smart friends that let you pay for their dinners and cocktails and you don't even live at home because our society ain't good enough for you. You lie around all day in your swell club and talk about women and cham- pagne and race horses. Three months ago I gave you twenty-five thousand dollars which was to do you for a year. You swore by all that was holy that if I paid your last losses you'd never play the market again. Now look at you! To think I should ever have had such a son ! This time you can shift for yourself. You can pay brf your indebtedness by degrees and meantime you can go to work." "Do you mean that.?" asks Mr. Tom. "You bet I mean it!" says his father. [ 145] THE BUTLER'S STORY For a moment they glared at each other with- out speaking. Then Mr. Tom says with a sneer: "Do you intend to forbid me the house?" "Not at all!" says his father. "You can always make your home with us so long as you remain straight." "Thanks, I'm sure," says Tom. "Do I understand you won't let me have a single dollar to pay an honest debt ? " he says. " Do you call buying stocks you can't pay for honest?" asks his father. " It's as honest as any other Wall Street busi- ness," says Tom. "O, do you think so!" says his father, "Well, I don't! No, I won't give you a copper cent," he says. " From this time on you can earn your own living." Mr. Tom gave him one look and ground his teeth. " I might have known it!" he says. And with that he turns and walks out of the door. "Give me my coat!" he says to me in the hall. [ 146] I TURN DETECTIVE "Yes, sir," I says. " Keep a civil tongue in your head !" he snarls, "or something may happen to you!" "Very good, sir," says I very quiet. Then he cursed me and went down the steps and I could hear him muttering to hisself, " Thirty-five thousand dollars ! Thirty-five thou- sand dollars!" Although there was going to be a great party a sort of gloom settled down over the house arfter that, for while Mr. Tom did not come back, two or three times lawyers called to see Mr. Carter in the library and there was always high words before they came away. Miss Patricia started to take a course in trained nursing and that kept her so busy most of the time that she was never in when anybody called and Mr. Potts never came at all. Downstairs things went on about as usual. Evelyn man- aged to pump Eliza about the dinner and before she got through found out all about "T. T." and my two thousand dollars. But she seemed to think it was too bad I was never to get the [ 147] THE BUTLER'S STORY money, which it was made clear I shouldn't when I got the check back from the bank marked "No funds" and a letter from the Re- ceiver in Bankruptcy saying that I was scheduled for two thousand dollars but he did not have very favorable hopes of any dividend being paid. But I thought I noticed a increased respect on the part of the other servants, and several who hardly used to sound the "Mister" when they spoke to me pronounce it now quite audible. About this time Master Willie came home from school and began to make things lively and everybody miserable, for he would get up at seven o'clock and come down stairs to break- fast, which is most inconvenient. But I fixed it so his coffee should be kept hot from the ser- vants' table and he thought it was fine and a great deal better than wot he got at school. My eye! but he is smart! He is most as clever as Miss Patricia and as wicked as Mr. Tom, only in a perfectly good-natured way. He and Miss Patricia are the greatest chums and she takes him to the matinay with other boys who [ 148 ] I TURN DETECTIVE are his friends and you would think that they would eat her up. It is funny that she does not care much for young gentlemen her own age, but with boys she is as free and easy as she can be and loves to have them around. Mr. Carter may be common but Master Willie is downright vulgar, for he says "Gee!" and "Golly!" and "Gosh!" right out all the time while Mr. Carter only swears occasional. But Master Willie knows Lating, Greek and Algebra and it is astonishing to hear him repeat Shake- speare and the Ballad of the Revenge by Teni- son. But sometimes I can tell by his breath he has been smoking cigarettes, and he sticks pins in the men's legs who are in knee breeches. One day when I said I smelt smoke on him he says : "Gosh, Ridges, you make me think of Snooks. " "And who may be Snooks?" says I. "Why Snooks is a master at our school," he says, "and if he thinks you have been smok- ing arfter a football game," he says, "he will [ H9 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY rush up and grab you by the hand and stick his great nose into your face and say 'My! But that was a fine tackle you made in the first arf!' and then he will sniff hard two or three times to see if he can smell anything." Well wot happened at the ball was quite orful and spoilt it all for everybody who knew about it, which was only a few, but when everything was going on full swing I happened to go into the coat room to open a window to let in some air. The coat room is in the extension and you can see the back of the house from it, and just as I looked up I saw a shadow in Mrs. Carter's window. "That is queer," I says, "I wonder who is in Mrs. Carter's room!" I am always uneasy about it because she has a little safe there with all her jewellery in it. So I thought I would go up and see if everything was all right. It was about a harf arfter twelve and the ballroom was jammed with lots of gentle- men standing outside the door and couples sit- ting on the stairs. On the floor above are the [ 150 J I TURN DETECTIVE dressing rooms where the maids and valets are, but most everybody uses the elevator. Well, it was so crowded outside that I ran up the back stairs to the third hall where Mrs. Carter's room is located. It was absolutely still up there with no one around, only the cigarette smoke and the music came up from below, and Mrs. Car- ter's bedroom door was shut. So I turned the knob quiet and opened the door a little. Every- thing seemed all right and I was just going to close it again when I noticed a little crack of light in the closet. I might as well admit I was scared but there was nothing else to do so I crept over and threw open the door sudden and there was a man in evening dress working at Mrs. Carter's safe. He turned, and just as I was going to grab him I saw it was Mr. Tom! He turned very white for a minute and then the ugliest look came into his face I ever saw. " O ho ! " he says between his teeth, " It's you, is it!" "Yes, Mr. Tom," I says, "it is me." " Wot do you propose to do ? " he says, [ 151 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY " — charge me with being a burglar?" he says with a sneer. "I shall tell my master you were in your mother's bedroom closet trying to open the safe," I says. "Come, come," he says, "don't be a fool. No one would believe you. Be sensible," he says, "and keep your mouth shut." "I'm sorry, sir " I began. "Please, for God's sake, Ridges!" he whines, coming out of the closet, "don't ruin me!" I stepped back to allow him to pass and shook my head and before I knew wot he was going to do he sprang at me and struck me a terrible blow in the face that banged my head back against the wall so that everything grew black and then while I was helpless I felt another blow and fell to the floor unconscious. I don't know how long it was before I came to myself but when I did I was lying on the floor in Mrs. Carter's bedroom and the blood was streaming into my eyes and mouth and [ 152] I TURN DETECTIVE there was a singing in my head. Then I lost consciousness again and arfter a while I woke up and crawled to the door, but it was locked on the outside and in trying to open it I fainted and when I came to for the third time the room was full of people and Miss Patricia was there in her ball gown with a sponge and a basin wiping my face. "Better not send for the police," I heard Mr. Tom say. "The thing should be managed quietly." "Good, he's coming to!" said Miss Patricia shoving a pillow under my head. "Do you know me, Ridges ?" "Miss Patricia!" I whispered trying to smile at her. Then I grew weak again. "Here, take a sip of brandy," she says, holding up a glass. Just then Mr. Carter says: "That is enough, Patricia, you have done enough for him, I think." "Wot do you mean.?" she says, "Do you intend that I shall not look arfter an injured THE BUTLER'S STORY man?" and her eyes flashed so that her father says sort of nervous: "O, do just as you Hke!" There was a great deal of confusion and I noticed that every time they went in and out they had to unlock the door, and that Mrs. Carter was walking around in her feathers wringing her hands and sort of whimpering. Then there was a low knock on the door and Miss Harriet came in with Mr. Ketchem, the family lawyer, who had been downstairs at the party, and Master Willie who slipped in behind in his pijamas and wrapper. "Well, well," says Mr. Ketchem, "This is very unfortunate! Carter, I think you had bet- ter let me take charge here and straighten things out, eh ?" "I wish you would!" says Mr. Carter, puUing out a cigar and biting orf the end and chewing it. "Well," says Mr. Ketchem, "Let us put that man on the sofa the first thing." The brandy had revived me, so I says, "I think I am able to get up, sir," and with that I [154] I TURN DETECTIVE crawled to my knees. At first Miss Patricia was for making me lie down again, and then Mr. Ketchem and Mr. Carter harf carried me over to the sofa and laid me down on it. "Now, Mrs. Carter," says Mr. Ketchem, "there is nothing to worry about. Your jewellery is quite safe and you have guests to be attended to. May I suggest that you take a drink of some stimulant and go downstairs ? Try and calm yourself." So Mrs. Carter took a little brandy which made her cough and went out. That left Mr. Carter, Mr. Ketchem, Miss Patricia, Miss Har- riet, Mr. Tom and Master Willie in the room. It is very spacious and the fire was smouldering cheerful and I began to feel sleepy and wonder if James would have the sense to open another case of champagne, and I heard Mr. Ketchem say : "We might as well find out exactly how this thing happened before any stories get about," he says. "As for you. Ridges, remember that if you make a move to leave the room you will be arrested and locked up." [ 155] THE BUTLER'S STORY "Very good, sir," I muttered, feeling very seedy and not understanding why he should talk that way to me. He fumbled in his pocket and took out some envelopes and a gold-headed pencil and then he told the ladies to sit down and he sat down his- self. Miss Harriet took a seat orf in the corner by the door and kept saying"0 dear!" and "Dear me!" and acting like a silly sheep. "Now," he says, says he, turning to Mr. Tom, "please tell me exactly wot occurred." Well, that woke me up, I can tell you, and I listened as hard as I could while Mr. Tom told most circumstantial how he had just come out of the coat room on the second floor when he saw me slip hupstairs and start toward his mother's bedroom. He knew, he said, that Mrs. Carter had just purchased a valuable necklace and he thought he would find out wot I was doing hupstairs when I ought to be in the hall receiving the guests. He hurries arfter me, he says, and sees me enter the room and go [ 156] I TURN DETECTIVE toward the closet. Then he waits while I go fumbling at the safe. He calls to me that I am under arrest and I turn and suddenly attack him and he knocks me down and locks me in the room and gives the alarm to Mr. Carter. Mr. Ketchem had been getting everything down on the back of an envelope. "It's false!" I shouts trying to get up on my feet. "It's a lie!" "Shh!" says Miss Patricia, shaking her head at me. "You will have your turn," remarks Mr. Ketchem very severe. "Keep quiet and sit down." So I did. But it was wonderful to hear that Tom lie! "Now," says Mr. Ketchem, "a few ques- tions of you, sir," and he turns to Mr. Carter. "How many people have the combination of this safe?" he asks. "Only my wife and Eliza Thomas her maid," says Mr. Carter. [ 157 J THiE BUTLER'S STORY "Ha!" says Mr. Ketchem, writing it down, "Eliza Thomas — where does she come from ?" "Ask Ridges! " interrupts Mr. Tom. "I guess that explains how he got the combination of the safe." "O!" I gasps, "wot a " "Hold your tongue!" says Ketchem. "Can't you make that man keep still!" shouts Miss Harriet. "Wait, Ridges," said Miss Patricia. "You'll have your chance." "How long has the man worked for you?" he asks of Mr. Carter very impressive. "Nine years," he says. "Faithfully, so far as you know .?" says he. "Yes, so far as I know," he says. "In any trouble as you know of?" says he. "Not that I know of," he says. "Hm!" says Ketchem writing it down. "Now," turning to me, "get up there and tell us your side of it and take care you tell us the truth." "He is not strong enough to stand, let him [158 j I TURN DETECTIVE sit here on the sofa," says Miss Patricia summat indignant. "O, very well," says Ketchem, "Only go ahead." "Well," I says, "I saw the shadow on the window when I was in the coat room and I went up, and Mrs. Carter's door was closed and I opened it and saw a crack of light in the closet. It was Mr. Tom that was there. He didn't find me there at all. When," I says, " I discovered who it was in there, he begged me to say nothing and then he took me orf my guard and knocked me down and left me there." "O!" gasps Miss Patricia. "How can he tell such a lie!" says Miss Har- riet. "Hm!" says Mr. Ketchem, "So you are going to try to put it on a member of the household are you ? You had better think twice," he says. "You will suffer all the more for it," he says. "Well, it is the truth," I says, "I can't change that." "Hm!" says Ketchem, "This is very awk- [159] THE BUTLER'S STORY ward. Of course the man is lying, but it will make a nasty story for the papers." "O," says Mr. Carter, "arfter all these years! I never would have believed it! Ridges how could you do it!" "I didn't, sir," I says. "Tom," says Miss Patricia suddenly, "was the door of the room open or closed when you came down the hall }" "Closed," says Mr. Tom with a smile. "Of course he closed it arfter him so no one would see wot he was up to." "Didn't you say you could look into the room and see him going toward the closet?" she says. "No-o-o," says Tom trying to think. " Yes you did ! Yes you did ! " says Ketchem. "I have it all down on this envelope. 'I saw Ridges enter the room and go toward the closet,' you says." "Well, if I said it, it was so," says Tom sort of nervous. "Then if you could see Ridges going toward [ i6o ] I TURN DETECTIVE the closet how could the door be closed ?" asked Miss Patricia. Well, something warm come into my heart for I saw she was on my side. Mr. Tom hesitated. " I mean he started for the closet — of course he was intending to go to the closet," says he. "But how do you know," she persists, "if the door was between you ?" "O hell," he says, "I don't remember exactly how it was, but I saw him go in and I opened the door and went in arfter him!" "Hm!" says Ketchem, a-writing of it down. "You say Ridges attacked you?" asks Miss Patricia. "He did," says Tom. "He is bigger and heavier than you," says she. "How was it he didn't hit you .?" she says. "I was too quick for him!" he says scowling at her. "Say," he adds, "wot are you trying to do ? Make me out a liar ?" "Not at all," she says, "I'm only trying to find out the truth." [ i6i ] THE BUTLER'S STORY "Hm!" says Ketchem, "Is there anything you wish to add to your testimony?" turning to me. "Mr. Thomas had a small piece of paper in his hand," I says, "when he turned around in the closet, if that is anj^hing," I says. Mr. Ketchem wrote it down. "Let's look for it," says Miss Patricia. "Patricia!" cried her father, "Do you mean to insinuate that your brother is not telling the truth ? I am surprised at you." But Miss Patricia was already on her hands and knees lookirig under the bed and by the closet door, only Mr. Tom who was sitting right there made no move to help and glared as if he would like to bite her. Then she came back and sat down by me again. "It is gone," she whispered. "Where can it be.? O, it's all too dreadful!" "This is awkward!" repeated Mr. Ketchem. "It is word against word. We really ought to have some corroborative evidence. You say that this Thomas woman had the combination [ 162 ] I TURN DETECTIVE of the safe. Send for her," he says. "We might as well get her testimony now as later." "She will lie to shield Ridges!" sneered Tom. "Well, we will nail her testimony now so she cannot change it later anjrway," says Ketchem. So Eliza was rung for and she came up ter- rible flustered and nervous. "Now," says Mr. Ketchem standing her up all alone by herself in the middle of the floor, "tell the truth. Did you ever tell anybody the combination of your mistress's safe.?" Now Eliza was so scared she did not see me at all and she did not know wot it was all about but just looked from one to the other of them beseeching and for a minute she didn't answer. Then she said in a very low voice: "Yes, I did," she says. Miss Patricia was looking hard at Mr. Tom. "Hm!" says Ketchem, "To] whom, if you please ?" Tom was glaring at Eliza like he would hip- notize her and she caught his eye and sort of [163 J THE BUTLER'S STORY trembled and Miss Patricia saw that too. Then Eliza looked down at the floor and says: "Mr. Thomas Carter." "Wot!" shouted Mr. Carter. "Don't He, woman, or we'll have you in jail too!" "It's an infernal falsehood! "yelled Mr. Tom. "I have hardly spoken to the girl in my life!" "Gently! Gently!" says Ketchem. "Every- thing in its place and one thing at a time. Now, my girl, don't be afraid. Tell us how you came to confide this to Mr. Thomas, as you say ?" "It was at the theatre," says Eliza, sort of choking. " He said he loved me and was going to marry me and he had given me a beautiful necklace and a bokay, and we were sitting in a box and watching the play. There was a safe on the stage and a fat little man, who was pre- tending to be a burglar, made a great fuss about opening it and when at last he got it open there was only a coal hod with some coal in it. Every- body laughed and Mr. Tom said he never met anybody yet who could remember a safe com- [ 164] I TURN DETECTIVE bination without writing it down, and I said I could and he bet me a dozen pair of new long gloves that I couldn't. So I told him." "Hm!" says Ketchem. "You say this is all a lie, Mr. Carter?" "Absolutely," gasps Tom. "She is making every word of it up." " Let us see," says Mr. Ketchem. " Did you ever give this young woman a necklace ?" "I did not!" says Tom. "Or take her to the theatre ?" "Never!" says Tom. "Wot play do you claim he took you to?" asks Ketchem. "To the Herald Square," says Eliza. "And he did, too! I'm astonished he won't say so." "When do you say it was?" "November 27th, — of a Thursday," says Eliza. "Hm! Have you still got the necklace?" "Indeed I have!" says Eliza. "Fetch it here," says Ketchem. All this time Mr. Tom had been getting more [ 165 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY and more uneasy but he kept sitting down in the same position and never moving. "Do you mind turning orf that light ?" asks Miss Patricia of him pointing to one across the room. "O, leave it alone, can't you!" he growls, then turning to Mr. Ketchem he says, "How much longer are you going to let this woman slander me ? Is the production of a bit of jewellery going to prove that I gave it to her or that I am a liar or a safe-cracker ?" "We must give everybody a chance," says Mr. Ketchem. "That is only fair," says he. Pretty soon Eliza came back with the neck- lace and gave it to Mr. Ketchem, who took it and held it up. "Hm!" he says, "A pretty good imitation! Now you say Mr. Carter gave you this ? " "1 do indeed," says Eliza. "And you say this is all a He .?" asks Ketchem of Tom. "I most certainly do," says Tom, quite red. [i66] I TURN DETECTIVE "Very awkward!" says Ketchem, "Very awk- ward indeed ! Wot do you make of it, Carter ? " "It looks like a conspiracy to rob the house and put it on my son," says Mr. Carter, but he didn't say it very confident like, and he looked all broke up. "Tom," says Miss Patricia, "will you swear to me on your honor as a gentleman and by God's holy word that wot Eliza says is false ? " "I will," says he bold as brass, "every word of it. I'll swear by anything you like." "Then," says Miss Patricia, "you are not telling the truth, for you were at the theatre with Eliza just as she says." "Wot!" stammered Tom, turning white. "For I saw you," continues Miss Patricia, "in the back of the lower right-hand box." "You — ^you're mistaken!" stammered Tom "No, I am not!" she replied. "I dare you to get up and face Eliza and deny wot she says." "Wot's that!" sneered Tom, "Some stage trick ! Why should I get up ? Wot do you mean ? I tell you she lies." [ 167] THE BUTLER'S STORY "Hm!" says Ketchem. "You decline to do as your sister asks?" Tom turned very red and then white. "I do — decline!" he says. "It's unnecessary!" I saw Miss Patricia whisper to Master Willie and Mr. Ketchem looked very hard at Mr. Tom. Old Mr. Carter simply bit his lips. Then all of a sudden Mr. Tom moved his leg and bent over very sudden. "Look there!" cries Master Willie and before you could say Jack Robinson he had grabbed up a little piece of paper that had been under Mr. Tom's foot all the time. " Wot are you doing ? " yelled Tom. " I don't know wot that paper is. I never saw it before!" But his voice sort of petered out at the end. Master Willie handed it to Mr. Ketchem who read it aloud: "Safe "31-3-13" "That is the combination of the safe," says Eliza. [ 168] I TURN DETECTIVE "And that is the same paper he had in his hand when I came in," I says. Miss Patricia looked very tired and sad. "It's all right, Ridges," she says, "I knew you were telling the truth." " Do you recognize the writing on this paper ? " says Ketchem handing it to Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter took it and bent his head. "It's Tom's," he says. "O, my God!" "Yes," says Master Willie, "and I saw Tom go into the room about five minutes before Ridges came up and shut the door arfter him, and then I saw Ridges come up!" "Hey!" says Ketchem. "Wot'sthat.? Where were you.?" "I was up on the landing all alone," says Willie. "I got out of bed to listen to the music." "Well, I'm !" says Mr. Ketchem. "Wot have you got to say to that.?" looking at Mr. Tom. Then Mr. Tom got up all of a sudden all shaking and very pale. [ 169 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY "Wot's the use!" he hissed out. "Yes, I was arfter the jewels. I admit it. And I took Eliza to the theatre, but I never did her, and I never meant her, any harm. As for the jewels I had a right to take 'em." "O, Tom!" groaned his father. "I'll never speak to you again!" cried Harriet. " Wot a beast ! You might have taken my dog- collar!" Mr. Tom he was standing in the middle of the floor, with his hair rumpled and his eyes red and glassy. "Yes," he says, "They're my jewels bought with my money," says he. "I've found out about this dirty 'T. T.' business and how you and O'Connor boosted the market to get in the suckers. And you got ^35,000 belonging to me! You cheated your own son along with the rest. Who's the crook, I'd like to know ? I leave it to you, Ketchem. Who's the biggest thief — my father or me ? And you even used your servant to deceive a lot of helpless boys around in a broker's office. Honesty! Honesty! I'm through [ 170 ] I TURN DETECTIVE with the whole rotten business. I'm sick of seeing the money spent in this house. I'm sick of my own silly existence!" He put his hands over his face and sobbed. Mr. Carter had sunk down into his chair so he looked like a poor old man, and everything looked sort of blurred to me, and I heard Miss Patricia say: " Eliza, will you look arfter Ridges, please ? And see that he gets safely to his room ?" "Yes, Miss!" says Eliza, and with Mr. Ketchem's assistance I got to my feet, and she put her arm around me and helped me through the door, but my head was that whirly I didn't notice much just then and I don't know how I got hupstairs. And that was the last I ever saw of Mr. Tom. [171] VII REAL SWELLS AND OTHERS IT has sometimes occurred to me that it is better to be a first-class servant than a second-class swell. I am sure Mr. Amos would say so, for he is a philosopher and likewise a man of letters. To be both of these is to be rich indeed, for with books we hardly have need of friends, and with philosophy we have need of nothing. Yet many has to make a show of being "smart," as it is sometimes called, who was clearly intended by God and nature for some different or lower order, yet being born into wealth they are compelled to spend useless lives trying to appear to be wot they are not when they might be happy as the wives and hus- bands of hard-working men and women. For example, Miss Harriet. She has enough [ 172 ] REAL SWELLS AND OTHERS sense to run a small flat and keep track of the ice and milk bills, and she would make a hit as the Lady President of the Female Literary Circle of some small town in the provinces, but she has no more idea of real gentility nor harf so much as Aunty Morgan who has lived in many of the best American families and is a good deal of a lady herself. But Miss Harriet spends to my knowledge, because Eliza told me so, hup- wards of seven thousand a year for her clothes and loses about a hundred and fifty a week at Bridge, and has dyspepsia four days out of seven. She is handsome in the way the girls is handsome that carry the spears in the front row at the Hippydrome and James is quite stuck on her, but she has not harf as much chance of marrying a gentleman as Evelyn Raymond and I guess she knows it, for if Evelyn or Eliza was turned loose at one of our swarees they would have all the favors. She will go on to her big subscription dances and Bridge parties and afternoon teas until she is sixty years old and be miserable and sour all her life when she would [ 173 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY be perfectly happy as the wife of an aber- dasher in a rural village, where she belongs by inheritance. Now Miss Patricia was born a swell and Aunty Morgan says she was a little lady from the moment she was shifted over to the bottle and got a chance. You can never tell where the real swells come from or where you will find them. I have seen sailors on our yacht who were real swells, and one of the finest gentlemen who comes to the house is the son of a plain farmer in Nova Scotia, but I never saw a coach- man that I thought was a swell, because a coach- man looks too much like a carrot, although there are grooms who if they was dressed proper could do a walking part at one of Mrs. Carter's balls, and no one ever know the difference. It is hard to say wot makes a man or a woman a swell, but there is something and it does not depend on birth, or wealth, or looks, or brains. And while I am on it I might as well say that I have concluded that all this talk about brains [ 174] REAL SWELLS AND OTHERS being the only thing that counts is rot, for some of the meanest, shoddiest people I know has plenty of them, and they are cheap enough in New York. Looks have something to do with it although a hunchback can be a fine gentle- man. Birth may have something, but not often in the case of a man. Wealth can do a lot, but it cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear; and brains can help. But it is neither one nor the other nor yet all — for a man may have birth, wealth, looks and brains and be a rotter. It is something else and you can call it anything you please, but if you haven't got it you might as well give up trying. That is one of the chief reasons why all this social striving is so useless. People think that being swell depends on how much money you have and how many houses and motors and so on and so forth, whereas it simply turns on whether you are a gentleman or a lady in the first place, and maybe you are and maybe you are not, and that rests with the Almighty entire. But many that have no hope of ever being [ 175] THE BUTLER'S STORY real swells are perfectly content to be near- swells so long as they can associate with swell people, and do not care wot they really are so long as the world takes them for wot they are not. And this desire for social advancement, while you see it everywhere, is worse in America than anywhere else because the Americans take everything they do so much more serious than other people. I have observed that in England and France and Italy, when I have been out with Lord Craven, people go into society to amuse theirselves and have a good time, and whether they do it proper or not they certainly have it, but in America the chief object of people is not to amuse theirselves but to better their social position and they go at it just as strenuous as they build railroads or sell stocks. Instead of growing fat and lazy they get thin and peevish, and the end of their social career is generally in a sanatarium. It is extraordinary how many ladies in Amer- ica, who are trying to get on, break down and either go mad entire or tempory. I never knew [ 176] REAL SWELLS AND OTHERS any English lady who got that way, and the reason over here is that they eat too much and sleep too little and keep on the go every minute so as people will know they are the real thing, which ten to one they are not at all. And they take it so serious no wonder they get only to be skin and bones and indigestive. Why, when a lady goes to a ball in New York she takes her life in her hand. And when a stock-broker has a chance to meet a rich swell he sinks his teeth in him so hard you can lift him orf his feet and swing him round and he won't let go until you throw ice water on his head like a bulldog. There is even a doctor over here as earns his living by recuperating ladies who have lost their health through nervous indigestion and he makes a pile of money, so they say, by merely exploring their stomachs with a little electric light and feeding them on piptonized milk at an hotel. It is enough to make you sick to see people toadying around to other rich people that they think stand a little higher than they do. And it is shocking how they will lie to get out of one [ ^n ] THE BUTLER'S STORY engagement in order to accept another they think is better. I have known Miss Harriet to break five engagements one arfter another just so as she could go to a sixth which in the end was given up by the lady who had sent the invitation so that she could accept another her- self. So it ended by Miss Harriet staying at home and reading a book which no fit woman should read, and I was afraid Miss Patricia would find it. Now I have looked into it careful and have no hesitation in saying that the number of people in New York who feel sure enough of their social position to do what they choose and asso- ciate with those they like, is so small as almost not to count. Everybody does the things and cultivates the people that will, as they think, help them along. Where ? God knows ! To the poor-house, the lunatic asylum and the home for the aged and useless rich, I fancy. A butler can see and hear a lot that's not spoke in words. It is enough to make your blood boil to see nice people snubbed and slighted by their [ 178] REAL SWELLS AND OTHERS friends for nothing at all. Take one of Mrs. Carter's teas. Now she has an old friend "Mamie" Jones who comes from Piqua too and who married a rich man but is not quite "up to sample," as they say over here. Does Mrs. Carter talk to her? Not much! "O, how dy do," she says quite languid, looking at someone else, and then she adds sudden "Ex- cuse me, I must speak to Mrs. Castor," and Mrs. Castor is probably some high roller, who comes to Mrs. Carter's because she amuses her for a week or so. Well, if Mrs. Jones had the strength of mind to go home and say no more about it you would not blame her. But wot does she do ? She clings hold of Mrs. Carter's hand and says, "O, there is Mrs. Castor to be sure!" she says, "Do introduce me, Maria dear!" Well, Mrs. Carter is annoyed dreadful, but she cannot refuse because she knows if she does Mrs. Jones will spread it around that her father's business was really confectionery with drugs on the side instead of an apothecary with a candy counter, who is alive yet. And Mrs. Jones is [ 179 J THE BUTLER'S STORY looking at her with glistening eyes as much as to say, " Don't you dare to refuse. If you do, you know wot I will do." So Mrs. Carter gets hold of Mrs. Castor and says very quick, "Ex- cuse me but I have got to introduce Mrs. Jones to you. I can't get out of it." Well, Mrs. Castor smiles and says, " Why should you ? I'm sure I am very glad to meet any of your friends," and Mrs. Carter has no time to ex- plain that she is not a friend but only a sort of relation and simply has to bite her lips when Mrs. Jones comes smirking up and she clasps the hand of royalty. O my! How happy she is ! How she thrills ! And how she gags so she can't speak! Then orf she rushes to make a lot of calls and everywhere she goes she says, "As Mrs. Castor said to me this afternoon, the straight front is going to be all the rage this year." Now the fact that she actually did finally meet Mrs. Castor may be the ruin of her and her husband, for soon they may be losing their health and stealing trust funds in order to take advantage of it. [ i8o] REAL SWELLS AND OTHERS And you can mostly see it at dinners. Does people invite those they like, or who amuse them or who think as they do ? Certain not ! They ask people who will invite them in return with sweller people than they know now. Do they ask their old friends with the swell people ? No, they have got all they can out of their old friends and they are not swell enough for the new people to meet, and they must not let the swell people know that they have any friends except swell people, so they ask a lot of folks who are almost strangers to them and like enough to each other, and the dinner is dull and dismal and dreary. And they would die rather than ask a relation. The only use of relations in New York is to insult them. Now real swells are for the most part simple enough and merely bent on having the best possible time with the least amount of trouble. They do not have to make a display or do a lot of entertaining, because they have nothing to gain by it, so they do as they please and asso- ciate with the friends they like, and their only [ i8i] THE BUTLER'S STORY fault is that they are selfish and lazy. But wot chance has Mrs. Carter or anybody else to get to know them .? None at all — not if she had a hundred millions. They don't need her and they don't want her. Even if she got to know them she has nothing to offer them, and even if she was a lady which she is not, and could amuse them for a while, they would drop her like a shot just as soon as the newness wore orf Even if they did not drop her they would take no trouble about her, for the swells never take any trouble about anybody. They may have intimate friends who they have known all their life, from childhood up, but they never go to see them — the friends are the ones who have to do the running and the standing round waiting for orders. They never answer letters or invita- tions and the only way anyone can find out if they are coming to dinner or not is to telephone and see if they are in the country, and if not, to inquire if they would excuse your asking if they intend to dine with you. Probably they will never dine with you at all or come to visit you [ 182] REAL SWELLS AND OTHERS or even call, but they will invite you a dozen times and then call it orf if not convenient. If you expect to retain your self-respect put no confidence in them unless you are one of them and can answer them back. We do a lot of entertaining at our house in town but not so much as at The Beeches for it is a fact that a lot of people who haven't time to bother much with Mrs. Carter in the winter take more interest in her as soon as it begins to get hot and uncomfortable in the city. And that is the best time to tell whether people are real swells or not, for it is on a house party that they has time to show their real character, particular so in regard to giving tips to those who have waited on them. It is not so much how much they give but how they do it, and a woman as is not a lady will show it every time she hands you a five-dollar note. Why the way some people give tips is enough to make you disgusted with human nature. They act as il they was suspected of crime or had left a undis- covered murder hupstairs in their trunk. People [ 1B3 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY who is quite independent at other times look like school children caught playing hooky when they have to go and pass me in the hall. Now a high class servant figures on his tips just as much as a cook does on her drippings or a housemaid on her outings, and besides it is a sign that the guest is satisfied and there is pleasant relations in the house between every- body. A real gentleman or a lady will always tip you and tip you right, b^t the people who has got their money sudden or isn't used to good society is just as likely to hand you silver as a twenty-dollar note or even more so. Now you do not expect silver in England except from very young lads or gentlemen who cannot afford to bring down their own valets and you can be sure of at least ten bob from every one who comes down from Friday until Monday. If they stay a week instead of over Sunday you will get double that, and from talking with other men in ser- vice I should say that one might expect about the same rates in the big houses in this country — that is to say two or three dollars for each [ 184] REAL SWELLS AND OTHERS couple or single person over the week end. But this does not include bounders and rich swells who will never give a butler' or groom of the chambers less than a guinea in England or a five-dollar note in this country, no matter how short their stay may be. Of course, with royalty it is different, and His Royal Highness gave orders to donate me a five-pound note when he stayed at Craven Hall for five days, which was handed to me by Mr. Gray Whitney, his secretary, and I have it yet in the bottom of my box. Now at some very swell establishments the hupper servants put on a good deal of side which I consider very bad form, and this is apt to be the case with ducal houses, but not royal dukes. I know one fellow as used to be a ostler's boy when he was a lad at the Blue Pea- pock Tavern, and who got employment at Tat- tersall's and from that on to the track and in with the breeders and racing people and is now Equerry to the Duke of Blenheim. Well, some American people came to visit His Grace and [185] THE BUTLER'S STORY McGuinness (the "Equerry") showed them the stables and had a stallion trotted round the paddock on the end of a leader for them to see, but nothing else; so when they went to leave the gentleman thought he would show his apprecia- tion and offered McGuinness two golden sov., but McGuinness waved them aside and shook his head with a superior gester and says "No thankee, sir, I never touch anything but paper." But the gentleman was the right stuff and gave him a good dressing down then and there for being a impudent servant and reported him to His Grace who gave him the sack and served him right. Now a serving man cares less for what he gets than for being remembered and receiving credit as a human, and a smile and a pleasant word is often worth as much to him when he is feeling down on his luck as a gold coin. If h^ feels that a person cannot but ill spare the money he would rather not have it at all, and he sometimes does not get it in any case. It is surprising how many people rush away at the [ i86] REAL SWELLS AND OTHERS last minute Monday morning and forget to tip anybody, and some skulks in their room until no one is around and then slips out sudden or goes orf by the veranda door. If a man or a woman is mean at heart the servant is the one who suffers from it, for they will decide how little they can give you and then cut it in harf and then act as if they was being blackmailed when they hand it over. Often I would have liked to throw their dirty money back at them. Once a man who was worth twenty million dollars came and stayed ten days with us and gave me a quarter when he went away, and that is a fact also. I have it in my box of curiosities along with one of Mr. Hunter's waistcoat but- tons with the royal imprint, that fell into the soup. Now you might think that I was making fun but it is only the sad truth, and when all is said and done the tips a man gets will never make him a millionaire. In a big house he can double his wages spring and autumn but it is at an [ 187] THE BUTLER'S STORY enormous cost to his respect for human nature. It has often occurred to me that if some butler that knows would only publish a schedule of the tips which are usually given and expected in swell houses in this country he would be con- ferring a favor all around and I should divide them into classes according to the length of the visit, thus: Week For the Butler Week or Ten Month END Days Ordinary, Single ladies and gentlemen ^2.00 $ 5.00 iSiio.oo Ordinary, Married couples . 3.00 5-$ 10 10-$!^ Rich swells, brides and grooms, distinguished for- eigners, politicians and brokers 5.00 10.00 i5-$25 Clergy, continental nobility and decayed relations . . i.oo 2.50 3.50 Now the second-man as does your valetting deserves as much as the butler and so does the ladies' maid, but if you think you have got to tip everybody in the house you are entirely mis- [ 188] REAL SWELLS AND OTHERS taken and show you are not to the manner born. You should remember (in America): (i) The Butler. (2) The valet or maid, if you stay only for the week end; if you come for a longer visit you should include, (3) The outside man as attends to your luggage, (4) The groom of the chambers (if there is any), (5) The coachman, and (6) The chambermaid. Silver will do for the outside man in England and a dollar over here. And there you are, and if you go throwing your money around any- where else they will think you are from Pitts- burgh. Once on a Monday morning when we was standing in the front hall waiting for an old gentleman with the gout who was very grumpy Mr. Amos whispered back to me that he would lay five dollars the old boy would pass me by. Now it so happened that he had used very hard words to me by reason of being in pain the night before and when he came along he stopped and [ 189] THE BUTLER'S STORY made a sort of grimace and handed me a twenty- dollar note. I heard Mr. Amos whistle under his breath but he gave me the five dollars arfter- wards and said you never could tell when Nor- thern Pacific would declare a extra dividend. But I feel that this is a sordid subject, only it would not be so if people used a little thought- fulness and common-sense about it. The guests at an house party are apt to be very much alike from one week end to another and frequent repeat theirselves, and there are two classes which to me are especial obnoxious, namely, wot Miss Patricia calls the Bores and the Fresh Johnnies. The Bores you have always with you, and so far as that goes you have the Johnnies also but not so per- sistent. The Bores are always invited every- where because you can always rely on them to fill up at the last minute and not to do anything objectionable. But I am often surprised that they are invited at all because how anyone could get any pleasure from their society is beyond me, not to say incredulous. The Bores always [ 190 ] REAL SWELLS AND OTHERS calls most assiduous and you can figure on each of them getting around about once in two weeks, and they always call when the ladies is sure to be at home, in which they differ from the Fresh Johnnies who only call when the ladies is sure to be out, if they call at all which is seldom. There is one gentleman who I am sure pre- pares everything that he is going to say before he starts out, and I am willing to wager he says the same thing wherever he goes. He rarely eats anything at dinner and when he gets to the roast no matter if he is in the middle of a sen- tence or telling one of his anecdotes he simply turns his back on the lady he is talking to and begins to talk to the one on the other side, be- ginning at the beginning again. I discovered this once at a dinner at our house where he sat between Mrs. Carter and Miss Patricia. He started in with Mrs. Carter. "It is really astonishing," he says, "the an- tagonism to the President in Wall Street," he says. "I was speaking the other day to a prominent banker who remarked " [ 191 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY Then I lost wot he was saying because I had passed on, and when I came around with the white wine he was telling Mrs. Carter a story of a Bishop at a christening and he says, "And the good Bishop didn't know whether it was a boy or a girl so he " Well I didn't think anything of it until I was passing the champagne and when I got to the gentleman in question he was saying something about the opera to Mrs. Carter and who was going to be the new director, and all of a sudden he turns and begins on Miss Patricia. "It is really astonishing," he says, "the an- tagonism to the President in Wall Street," he says. " I was speaking the other day to a promi- nent banker who remarked " Well, I almost smiled but not quite, and if you will believe me when I came around with the claret he was just saying "And the good Bishop did not know whether it was a boy or a girl so he " Well that is how that gentle- man gets along for he talks all the time even if ungrammatical, and he never says anything [ 192 ] REAL SWELLS AND OTHERS which will give offence to anybody, so you see him at all the teas and receptions and dances and at everything except the swellest dinners. Now there is lots of others just like him and they only differ in the way they do it. One makes a specialty of art, although I do not really believe he knows much about it, but he has read two or three books and he is always telling the ladies wot is in them about this and that and the other thing, and so they all im- agine that he is quite the cheese on that subject. But Mr. Amos says he does not know enough to go in when it rains about anything, and I will take Mr. Amos's word on that. There is another one who knows the plots of all the operas and when each composer was born and when he died and how many times he was married and how many children he had. There is another who can do eight different card tricks and several more with a handkerchief and a piece of string to say nothing of one with a glass of water and a cane, and he is a great success you may be sure. And there is another that collects [ 193 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY funny stories and puts them in a book with a index which he keeps in his pocket and some- times in his cufF, and I have seen him take it out on the sly when both of the ladies he was between was engaged in conversation and cram up. Another time when he was there it slipped out of his sleeve on to the floor and James picked it up, and I found him laughing fit to burst in the pantry after dinner and he says: "My eye," he says, "did you ever read any- thing like that!" says he. And he had the little book open at "B" where the gentleman had written "Bad Stories." And I must say that although I was astonished at first I read them all and nearly died laughing. There was "Clergymen Stories" under "C" and "Doctor Stories" under "D," and "Religious Stories" under "R," only I did not read them. Well, the gentleman he missed his little book after he got back to the drawring-room with the ladies and was that oncomfortable he nearly expired and he could hardly talk, and although they asked him to tell some funny stories to them he [ 194 ] REAL SWELLS AND OTHERS couldn't remember any. And when he went out I put the book in his hat and handed it to him and he was the most relieved person I ever see. So he gave me five dollars and says I should not mention the book, which I have not except to tell about it here. Well you are apt to get three or four of the Bores most any week down at The Beeches and they are always the ones that are out to get the most for their money and will smoke two cigars to every other gentleman's one and take a few away on Monday morning to smoke on the train as they say, but I guess more likely to last through the week until they come again; and the one who is the expert on art is always forgetting to bring his neckties and silk socks and borrowing them from Mr. Carter, which he never returns and is wearing them yet, for I have laid out more than once for him a pair of orange accordion pleated silk socks which cost eight dollars and which I borrowed from Mr. Carter for him over a year ago. Now that comes pretty near being petty larceny. But [ 195 1 THE BUTLER'S STORY the Bores differ from the Fresh Johnnies be- cause the Bores do by intention wot the Fresh Johnnies do by accident. Most of these are young fellows who are not such a long time out of college who have been taken up by the swell ladies of society and think they are doing fine and own the whole show. They all talk very loud and are terrible confident unless someone contradicts wot they say and tell them they don't know anything, which is the truth, and then they collapse like a clam and say nothing. I am always scared when one of them is sitting next to Miss Patricia because you never can tell wot they are going to say, and although they mean well they are just as apt to say something orful as not, but I guess Miss Patricia can take care of herself if anybody can. Now they are always forgetting all their things, and there is one that always rings the bell and says, " Ridges, go and get me one of old Carter's neckties or his shirt studs or wot not," and be- cause I do not like to take Mr. Carter's things which are so expensive I have bought a small line [ 196] REAL SWELLS AND OTHERS of aberdashery that this gentleman and others like him need and when the valet unlocks their boxes I look them over and see wot they lack. It really costs very little and at the end of the month I charge it to Mr. Carter. Eliza buys the things at a department store, and she gets white ties for nineteen cents apiece and black ones for a quarter and brass collar buttons at five cents apiece, and underclothes at fifty cents a pair, socks at twenty-five cents and tooth brushes the same. I suppose I have saved Mr. Carter hundreds of dollars in the last five years. And this makes it easy for nice young fellows that have really meant to bring their things but have forgotten to do so, who ring the bell and ask me if I would mind lending them one of my own ties or collar buttons, for then I can say I have a few new ones which I will be glad to let them have at cost, and they are so relieved to find that they do not have to come down to dinner without a collar or something that they usually give me a couple of dollars, which all goes toward my publick-house at Wapping-on-Velly. [ 197 J VIII THE DELUGE " T TOW is this thing going to hit mj?" says ^ -^ Mrs. Carter looking up over her paper and taking a bit of egg and sausage. "Darn if I know," says her husband. "I've shrunk two or three millions already, only they haven't begun to cut dividends yet so it don't make any particular difference in our income," he says. "All the same I guess you and Harriet had better go slow for a while on all real lace gowns and such. Wot worries me," he says, "is these investigations. The way they are going at things now, if a feller has given the orfice boy a five dollar gold piece at Christmas and charged the company for it they indite him for larceny," he says. "Well, you have never done anything wrong, [ 198] THE DELUGE have you, Sam?" says Mrs. Carter suspi- cious-like. "No, of course not," he says, "but many an innocent man has suffered for the sins of others. The public insists on having victims." Just then James came in and said there was a young man wanted to see Mr. Carter most urgent. "Tell him to wait!" says Mr. Carter. "I told him to and he used bad language," says James, " and, if you'll pardon me, sir, he said that you had better get a move on. He said he knew you was home." "O!" says Mr. Carter, "I suppose I may as well see him! He may be a process server or something." "Don't go near him!" says Mrs. Carter very anxious. "He may be a crank and shoot you." But her husband told her not to be a fool and how of course it was all right, but you had to be pleasant and agreeable with certain kinds of people, and went out to see wot the man wanted, and he was gone only a few minutes, but when [ 199 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY he came back he looked five years older. So Mrs. Carter noticed how hupset he seemed and insisted on knowing wot the trouble was, and he showed her a brown slip of paper and said that he was subpoenaed before that blamed Grand Jury- "O, Sam!" says his wife. "O, it is nothing!" he says pouring out more coffee. "I'm a member of the Grand Jury myself" he says. "Well," she says, "maybe it would have been better if you had served on it sometimes in- stead of giving that man the box of cigars and the overcoat every year." "Wot are you talking about!" he growls look- ing very fierce at her. "Why, don't you remember' " she began, but he shut her orf quick and told her not to talk so much (he was orful shirty and cross) and he bolted his coffee and stuffed a few rolls down his throat and told me to call up Mr. Ketchem on the telephone. Well, I was that uneasy that I could hardly [ 200 ] THE DELUGE do my work for I hated to think that anything might happen to one of Miss Patricia's family, for she loves her father most devoted, just as if he was a ordinary working man, and I was most anxious to hear wot Mr. Carter would say to Mr. Ketchem and he to him for it was evident there was something rotten in the State of Den- mark to say the least. So in a couple of hours Mr. Ketchem arrived in a brougham and fur overcoat and went right into the library with them on and of course I had to go along to help him orf. So he says: "Well, Carter, wots the hurry call ?" he says. Mr. Carter just shifted his big cigar and handed him the brown subpoena. "Hm!" says Ketchem. "Well, wot are you going to tell 'em .?" "Hanged if I know," says Mr. Carter. "Here, have a cigar." "No, thanks," says Ketchem, "I don't smoke in the morning." "Have a drink then," he says. " Don't care if I do," he says. [ 201 J THE BUTLER'S STORY "Scotch or rye, sir ?" I says. " Scotch," he says. " Look here, Carter," he says, "this looks serious," he says. "It must be that Tunnel Deal!" "That's it, fast enough," says Mr. Carter. So I helped Mr. Ketchem orf with his coat and fussed around getting the whisky for quite a while. "Well, I always said you was skinning awful close," says Ketchem. "I merely told you how it could be done, — I didn't advise it. You remem- ber that?" "I don't remember very clear," says Mr. Carter, " But anyhow we dug the hole and now the question is how are we going to get out of it." "Let me see," says Mr. Ketchem, "There was Wiggin, and Snow, and Bumstead in it, wasn't there .? Well, Wiggin is dead — you can shove most of it on him." Mr. Carter took a little walk around the room before he replied. Finally he said: "I don't like to do that, Ketchem." [ 202 ] THE DELUGE "Well, put a little on him," says the lawyer. "Wot else could we do?" asks Mr. Carter. "Well, the first thing," says Ketchem, "is to get hold of Snow and Bumstead and tell 'em not to remember anything." "They'd have sense enough to forget every- thing until they saw us, anyway," says Mr. Carter. " I tell you wot. You go over to Bos- ton to see 'em while I go before the Grand Jury." "Can't," says Ketchem. "I've got a sub- poena myself," he says. "Damn!" says Mr. Carter. " I tell you we're up against it," says Ketchem, "and we've got to be mighty leery." " It looks like it," says Mr. Carter. "Yes," says his lawyer, "and the way things is now you've got to give the impression of being willing to talk even if you're not," he says. "That is bad!" says Mr. Carter. " Well, you can talk about anything that don't count," says Ketchem. "And just forget on the important things. Take my advice," says [ 203 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY Ketchem, "and put it on Wiggin. Dead men tell no tales," he says. "It would be a low down dirty trick!" says Mr. Carter rather nervous. " Well, it would be better than going to jail," says Ketchem. "There's no fear of that, is there .?" asks Mr. Carter. "They just convicted Miller, didn't they?" says Ketchem. "And all he did was to over- certify an account by a couple of hundred thou- sand. You can't tell wot may happen, these days. If they got a chance they would convict an archbishop of forgery." "Well, we must get into communication with Boston at once," says Mr. Carter. "There's another thing," says Ketchem. " You had better retain a regular criminal lawyer besides," he says. "No civil practitioner knows anything about it, and I have never had a crim- inal case in my life. Take my advice and get the best one there is." Then he sees me fussing around by the door and he says, "What's [ 204 ] THE DELUGE Ridges doing there?" he says. "He'd better get out of here," he says. So I had to go out, and although I would have given my ears to hear more, that was all I caught. Well, you may be sure there was great ex- citement downstairs at noon for James had told everybody about Mr. Carter's subpoena and all the servants was sure that they would be out of a place for he would have to go to prison. James said as how the Grand Jury was used only to try men as had committed orrid felonious crimes and Mr. Carter must be far different from wot he seemed, and another of the men was positive that if you once got in you would never get out. Poor old Aunty Robinson was that hupset she couldn't eat and was on the edge of crying all the time. She said it was dreadful to think of anyone belonging to Miss Patricia having to go to prison. Well, I said he didn't have to go to prison just because he was sum- moned) but they all said I was wrong and that you might be called for a regular jury and get orf, but it was different with grand juries, and [ 205 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY Evelyn said the only way to get out of it was to say that if you told anything it would degrade and discriminate you, and that if you said that, they would lock you up anyway. They all agreed there was very little hope for him and as I did not know much about it I began to feel pretty well down myself. I did not know wot he had done but I said I was sure there was no malice or premeditation in it. Then one of them said that if you stole with malice you had a malicious prosecution, while if you stole with deliberation and premeditation it was larceny, but just ordinary stealing was theft. It didn't sound exactly right but I let it pass for I didn't want no argumentum with them and about arf arfter four o'clock the evening papers came and there it all was: CARTER CALLED BEFORE GRAND JURY Tunnel Deal Under Investigation Indictments Expected Soon And about four columns telling all about how Mr. Carter and Mr. Wiggin and the others [ 206 ] THE DELUGE had got up this company and made the capital of it several millions when all they had was some sort of permission to dig a tunnel that had never been dug, and then how they had sold that company to another company for about twice that, and the other company had sold all the stock to widows and orphans. It was very confusing and mixed up, but the idea seemed to be that Mr. Carter and his friends had got a lot of money for nothing at all and that if they hadn't committed any crime they ought to have. We all felt orful about it and James said he guessed it was time for any respectable man to leave the house but I told him to hold his tongue for a stupid ass and learn not to believe everything he reads in the papers. That night at dinner we had a terrible scene, for Mr. Carter came in all aggard and tired and threw himself into a chair and called for a glass of whisky and then Mrs. Carter and Miss Harriet came in and nobody said a word for a long time. Then Miss Harriet says; "Have you seen the papers?" [ 207 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY Mr. Carter shook his head and says: "No, I have had enough without reading the papers." "Well," says Miss Harriet, "I would like to know wot I am to tell my friends," says she. Mr. Carter looked at her and the veins in his forehead sort of swelled out and he started to speak and then he stopped and shook his head and picked up his fish as if he was going to eat. But Miss Harriet kept right on and wanted to know if wot the papers said was true and that he had got up a bogus company. She was that mad she didn't care who heard her, and her mother said: "Harriet! O Harriet! Not before the ser- vants!" And she says, "Wot do I care when all the world knows.?" she says. "Leave the room," says Mr. Carter to James and me and when we had gone into the pantry I coul'd hear him talking in a low tone to Miss Harriet, but it seems it did not satisfy her for I could hear her voice saying: [208] THE DELUGE "Well, I never would have believed it! I don't know wot I can say to everybody. I shall be ashamed to hold up my head. I'm disgraced!" Then Mr. Carter got hot and called her an ungrateful child and first Mrs. Carter sided with one and then with the other and they had an orful time. And just as I opened the pantry door a little crack to see if it was time to serve the ontray he put his head in his hands and began to cry and Miss Patricia who was late for dinner came in just then and when she saw her father sitting there all broke up, and Harriet and her mother just looking at him cold and haughty, she ran and threw her arms around him and got down on her knees and hugged him and said how he was the nicest father in the world and she would never believe any wrong of him as long as she lived, and by and by, he stopped crying and patted her head and said she was a good girl and the best in the lot and wiped his eyes and said they had better go on with dinner, which they did. [ 209 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY Well, James had heard enough to make him sure all was over and went on cackling about it downstairs until I wanted to cufF him, but I do not blame him for being excited about it, and all the more so as the first thing arfter breakfast the next morning Mr. Ketchem came with a round-headed little man with a sharp nose named Mr. Isaacs, and they all went into the library. Now I never would have heard any- thing more had it not been for the fact that I found a ventilator between the pantry and the library near the sink and as my duties kept me there, I sent James away and so long as I was there alone with no noise I could not help overhearing part of wot was said. Now it seems that Mr. Ketchem and Mr. Isaacs had got it all planned out beforehand that Mr. Carter should remember all about every- thing that had happened before the Statue of Limitations, wherever that may be, and either forget wotever happened elsewhere or put it on poor old dead Mr. Wiggin which it could not harm in the least they said, being as he was in his [ 210 ] THE DELUGE grave. For while Mr. Carter had gone down to the building where the Grand Jury was they had not been able to see him, being too busy, and so he was to be heard the next morning. But Mr. Carter had it on his mind that he didn't want to put anything on Mr. Wig- gin that the latter did not deserve and he had some hesitation about lying anyway, and Mr. Ketchem got sort of irritated and says: " Carter, you talk as if you was a white robed hangel and not a man of the world." And Mr. Carter waits a minute and then says sadly: "No, Ketchem, you know I ain't no hangel nor no parson neither, but I never lied under oath yet and no matter how many dirty deals you have put me through I have never laid any blame where it did not belong or got anybody else in trouble and I have taken my losses, as I have my gains, without squealing. You have always talked about being a good sport and to my mind that includes not blackguarding the [211 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY dead nor telling a lie when you give your word of honor," he says. And I felt proud of him and I says to myself: "Good for you!" "O fudge!" says Ketchem. "Wot kind of distinction is that," he says, " lying under oath and lying without; and wot kind of honor is it that will sacrifice the living for the dead!" he says. "Do you want your wife and family to be ruined because you go to jail!" he says. "O," says Mr. Carter. "You don't think it could come to that, do you, Mr. Isaacs?" And I heard Mr. Isaacs put down his glass and say: "Bretty glose to id," he says, "bretty glose to id." No one spoke for a long time. Then, at last, Mr. Ketchem says: "Not only that but if you tell 'em the truth," he says, "You are liable for every cent," he says, "and your family will be beggared!" "Wot is that?" says Mr. Carter. [ 212 ] THE DELUGE "Yes," says Ketchem, "Beggared, ruined, cleaned out, bankrupted!" "Why so ?" asks my master in a faint voice. " Because the evidence you will give will make you civilly liable for every cent these people claim they have lost — ^which is about ten times the value of your estate," he says. Well that put a different color on it and I could almost feel Mr. Carter on the other side of the wall struggling to make up his mind whether to be an honest man or a rascal. I do not believe he would have hesitated an in- stant had it not been for his family and his pride, but I cdiild understand that he felt he owed a duty to his wife and Miss Patricia and the others he had brought into the world wot- ever they might be, and Mr. Ketchem evidently saw his chance for he began to talk very fast about how foolish it would be to admit now that wot he had done before was wrong and to give up the money he had earned merely out of a foolish sentimentality and disgrace your family and go to jail into the bargain, and Mr. Carter [ 213 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY kept saying "Yes, yes," there was something in that to be sure, only two wrongs could never make a right. Just as I began to realize that the honor and welfare of Miss Patricia and the whole family was at stake and that good and evil was in mortal combat together in the library and had made up my mind to throw my weight on the right side if I ever got the chance, I heard the swish of skirts and I saw Miss Patricia come into the dining-room in her riding habit. So I went to see wot she wanted. " Ridges," says she, " Please fetch me a glass of water." And then what impelled me I know not for instead of obeying her I rushes forward and I clasps my two hands together and says: " O, Miss, I think your father needs you in the library!" And she looks at me for a minute and then she says: "Did he send forme.?" And I says: [ 214 ] THE DELUGE "No, Miss, if you'll pardon me, he did not send for you, but — but he needs you just the same!" "I think I understand," she says. "Thank you. Ridges, I'll go to him," and forgetting all about the glass of water she goes down the passage and knocks at the door of the library. Someone said "Who's there?" And without giving any answer Miss Patricia opened the door and went in and I slipped back to my pantry near the ventilator. "It's me, father, — Pat," she says. "O," said her father, "You must excuse me. We are very busy." "I am sorry to intrude," she says. "Good- morning, Mr. Ketchem ! How-dy-do .? Father, will you present this gentleman to me.?" I could just see old Isaacs getting up smirking and a-puUing of his forelock only there wasn't any, being as how he is as bald as an owl, and I could hear Mr. Carter saying: "This is my attorney, Mr. Isaacs. My daughter. Miss Carter." [ 215 1 THE BUTLER'S STORY "Glad to make your agquaintance," says Isaacs. "You must excuse us," says Ketchem very short. "We have an important matter under discussion." "May I not stay.?" asks Miss Patricia. "I will be still as a mouse. Father, do let me stay! Wot you are deciding may have to do with the future of all of us.' "No, no," says Ketchem. "No women." "Wot is that, sir.''" says Mr. Carter his voice changing. "This is my house and my affair and I will decide who shall be present at this interview. If my daughter wants to remain she may do so. I have no secrets from her." "O, as you choose!" growls Ketchem. "Thank you, father dear!" says Miss Patricia. "Then," continues Ketchem, "It is decided, is it not ? You will do as we planned ? And I will decline to answer on the ground of priv- ilege." There was a long silence inside the room and I could hear the big clock tick off a minute and [216] THE DELUGE a harf in the hall and then Mr. Carter said sort of agonized : "O my God!' I heard Miss Patricia exclaim: "Father, dear! Wot is it all about ? Tell me!" "I thought you were not going to interfere," says Ketchem, getting up out of his chair. Then all of a sudden Mr. Carter began to talk very fast to Miss Patricia and although I could not hear all he said I could tell that it was about how they wanted him to lie about wot he had done and how it was the only thing that stood between him and State's prison and their all being beggared and thrown penniless into the street, and then I heard Miss Patricia's voice say: "Is that wot you have advised my father to do, sir.?" to Ketchem. And he said: "It is either that or go to jail." And then there was a silence and she said in a sort of surprised way : "Have you given him his answer, father?" [ 217 J THE BUTLER'S STORY "No," he says, sort of ashamed. "I cannot see you disgraced." "Ah!" she said. "Well, / will give him his answer. Mr. Ketchem, my father declines to take your advice and commit perjury in addi- tion to any other offences into which you, with your clever scheming, may have lured him. From now on he is going to tell the truth and do right, no matter wot the consequences may be. If he is asked wot he has done he will tell, and if he is asked who advised him to do it, he will tell that too. Am I right, father?" "Yes," I heard him say, "You are always right, Pat!" "Then I may as well go," shouted Ketchem. "You know wot this means I suppose? It's each one for himself and the Devil take the hindermost." "He has got his claws on one of you already," said Miss Patricia very quiet. Then the door opened very sudden and Mr. Ketchem came out in a great hurry and very red in the face and he pounded through the [218] THE DELUGE dining-room and out into the front hall and slammed the front door and — "I think the young leddy is right," I heard Mr. Isaacs say, "I may be only a griminal lawyer, bud I respegt honesty and nobilidy of character when I see it. I suppose, Mr. Carter, you will have no further need of my services, and I will wish you good morning with the hobe that the course your daughter has advised you to bersue will give you beace of mind and in the end greader happiness than the other." "No, no, Isaacs," says Mr. Carter. "Stay here. I believe you are the only honest lawyer in the lot." "I am sure of it," exclaimed Miss Patricia. "Well, well," said Isaacs, "I have not often had the bleasure of hearing those sendiments and if I can be of any assistance I will be glad to remain your counsel." " I leave myself in your hands and that of my daughter," said Mr. Carter Then Isaacs said: "I suppose, Miss, you understand just wot [ 219 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY this will cerdainly mean to your father. If the Grand Jury find anything griminal in the trans- actions he may be indicted, gonvicted and even sent to prison, and as Counsellor Ketchem pointed out the disglosures he may be forced to make will put his greditors in position to seize all his proberty and throw him into bangkruptcy." "Then," answered Miss Patricia, "he will have done all in his power to make amends for any wrong he has done. I do not beHeve my father ever intended to harm any one, and if he has he will be the first to try to make restitution. At any rate wot would wealth be worth if dis- honestly obtained ? I can work. So can my father. If wot he has now rightfully belongs to others, let us give it back to them. If it is necessary for my father to go to prison, which I do not for a moment beheve, he will come out with a clear conscience ready to begin life over again." "If everybody were lige you, young leddy, we lawyers would have to go out of business," said Isaacs. [ 220 ] THE DELUGE Just then the bell rang and I had to go and it turned out to be Mr. Amos, so Miss Patricia came out to see him in the drawring-room and Mr. Carter and Mr. Isaacs stayed in the library and I heard no more, but I began to feel that I had not done right in listening even if it had been the cause of Miss Patricia's coming to her father's rescue, and when Mr. Amos went out I was a-standing in the hall and when I had handed him his hat I told him everything wot I had done and wot I had heard pass, and it almost made the tears come into my eyes. "You're an old rascal. Ridges!" he says when I had finished. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself for an eavesdropper?" "Yes, sir," I says, "I am ashamed of myself, but I am proud of Miss Patricia." "Well said. Ridges!" he says, "you have the temperature of an advocate!" Then he paused and looked at me very hard, and all of a sudden he slapped his knee and exclaimed : "By George!" says he, "Ridges, do you [ 221 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY think you could tell that over again," he says, "jus! as you have told it to me ?" And I says: " If it was to help Miss Patricia," I says, " I could shout it to a multitude from a Mound of Olives." And he larfed and says: "I may give you a chance, but," he says " if you tell any of it, tell it all to the very last word." Well, I did not know w6t was up so I went back to the pantry, and by and bye James came in with the evening papers and there it was worse than ever. They had found out all about the tunnel deal and hqw Mr. Ketchem was at the back of it and it said how possibly Mr. Carter and the others would be indicated and the ones out of the States would have to be extracated so it seemed a little better to be here than there. But it was clear that everything was in a very bad way indeed and all the ser- vants were so excited they could hardly eat. Dinner that night was a gloomy affair and the [ 222 ] THE DELUGE only thing Mr. Carter said was that they had better get a good full meal while they had a chance because you could never tell when you would get another. Mr. Amos came back after dinner and so did Mr. Isaacs, and they all stayed up very late looking over great quantities of papers in the Hbrary. Next morning the papers had everybody's picture and cartoons with convicts in stripes breaking stones, and Mrs. Carter and Miss Harriet claimed they had not slept a wink, and after breakfast Mr. Isaacs came for Mr. Carter in a cab and they drove orf to go before the Grand Jury. My eye! It was an orrible sen- sation to open the door for Mr. Carter for per- haps the last time and being so happy before. All that day I felt terrible and by and bye in the afternoon Mr. Carter came home looking very tired and depressed and went right to his room, and when the evening papers came they said he had told everything and now there would be no difficulty in putting the guilty parties in jail. [ 223 1 THE BUTLER'S STORY And then the strangest thing happened. About six o'clock the door bell rang and as James was hupstairs I answered it and a cheeky sort of a fellow was there smoking a cigar with his hat on one side, and he says: "Are you Carter's valay?" he says. "I am employed by Mr. Carter," I says in reply. "All right," he says laying a brown paper on my arm, "you are subpoenaed to appear before the Grand Jury to-morrow morning at ten o'clock." And before I could say a word he was arf a block down the street. Sure enough the paper said I was to come and testify against John Doe, which was some com- fort as it was not Mr. Carter, but I did not sleep much myself and the next morning I went down in the subway and finally found my way to the Grand Jury. But there is nothing grand about it. The building it is in is so dirty it cannot have been cleaned for years and it is full of orrible stale smoke and Italians. Well, they passed me along until I reached a room with an [ 224 ] THE DELUGE orficer by the door full of Jews and Armenians and people that had the appearance of having recently been intoxicated, and every once in a while a man came to a door and shouted a name and the person went in. Pretty soon he would come out and the man would shout another name. Well, by and by he called Peter Ridges and, as I got up to go in, another door opened and who should come out but old Mr. Gerard, Mr. Amos's father, and he gave me a smile and a wink and says: "Ridges, tell it all!" That naturally encouraged me summat, so I mustered up my courage and went in through the door, and I thought I should drop dead for there was a great circle of desks, and a gentle- man sitting behind each one and I was all alone in the middle of them like Daniel in the lion's den. Then one of them asked my name in a beard and another handed me a Bible and swore me to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help my God and to take a chair, and [ 225 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY again I was forced to be seated in the presence of my betters. Then a nice looking gentleman in another beard asked wot I knew about cer- tain conversations between one Ketchem and one Carter my employer, and if I could tell how it was that said Carter had decided to confess all he knew about the tunnel deal. So I did not feel embarrassed any longer and began to tell them and they were very particular about Mr. Ketchem and asked a lot of questions, and when I got to the part about Miss Patricia they all listened very hard and nodded and one asked me wot she looked like, and I said she was like an hangel on earth and the most beautiful lady you had ever seen, and then another who was smiling inquired if I thought Mr. Carter would do anything wrong, and I said not if he asked Miss Patricia first, and that she loved him better than anybody in the world, and it would kill her if anything happened to him, and that he was going to take her advice and give back all the money he had in the world to his creditors. Then a fat little man with gray eyes said he [ 226 ] THE DELUGE was of the opinion that the Grand Jury were under a great obligation to Mister Ridges (Think of that!), and the gray-bearded man said he thought so too, and they were all much obliged and I might go now, which I did feeling somehow much happier than when I had went in. And that night the extraordinary thing oc- curred, for when I took up the paper I read that the Grand Jury had not indicted Mr. Carter at all, but had indicted Mr. Ketchem instead and that he was held in twenty thousand dollars bail! And I was that overjoyed that I cried right on the paper, but the family had another already. Here is wot it said: KETCHEM INDICTED Grand Jury Indicts Lawyer for Conspiracy to Defraud The Grand Jury to-day returned a true bill against Joshua Ketchem, the well-known corporation lawyer, for conspiracy to defraud. Contrary to general ex- pectation no action was taken against another well- known New Yorker whose name has recently been mentioned in connection with the matter. It is be- [ 227 J THE BUTLER'S STORY lieved that the action of the Grand Jury in regarding the moral guilt of the attorney who devised and en- gineered the transaction as greater than that of his clients will meet with general approval. Among the incidents of the day the appearance before the Grand Jury of Peter Ridges, a butler in the employ of Samuel Carter, excited considerable comment. And that is the first and last time my name was ever printed in the paper, and thank God it was not my picture. [228] IX SAFE AT ANCHOR Primrose Lodge, Craven Hall, Alderlea, Hants. WHO would ever have thought it would come out this way ? And indeed it is hard for me to believe that it is true myself and that I am back again at Craven Hall and that my book is almost full of writing. To be sure in the hurry and confusion of seUing the house and packing up the things I thought that I had lost it and not much matter at that, but when I packed my box there it was sure enough with the cracked ha'penny and Mr. Hunter's waist- coat button way at the bottom under my Inver- ness coat that I had not worn since that night at Rector's. I can hardly believe that there ever [ 229 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY was such a place or such a night as I sit here on the porch with Eliza beside me smoking my pipe or how near I came to losing her once and for all. But it is so in fact. From where I sit I can see the gray walls of Craven Hall and there on the croquet ground are Mr. Amos and Miss Patricia, I mean Mrs. Amos, with my master and old Mr. Gerard, and EHza is sewing and humming to herself, which is a habit I shall break her of if I am able, and saying, "I thought you had lost that old book. Don't write in it, Peter. Why don't you talk to me?" But I am going to write in it for the last time and leave it for my post-humorous works. Yet wot I have to put down is not by any means all happiness, for Mr. Carter did lose all his money just as Mr. Ketchem said he would and went bankrupt and had to sacrifice all his property for his creditors. Two days after he testified before the Grand Jury a sheriff came and levied on the house and furniture and a receiver in bankruptcy took possession of it and gave us a week to get out. You would have [ 230 ] SAFE AT ANCHOR thought that Mrs. Carter would go orf her head for the first few days and Miss Harriet was that hupset that she would not speak at all. She acted as if she had a personal grievance against her father and all the world besides. One by one the servants was called up and paid orf until there was only about six left, including Eliza, Aunty Robinson and me, and although you will be surprised to hear it we got along quite beautiful without them while we remained. Then Mr. Carter hired a small flat on the West Side and asked Eliza and me if we would be so kind as to get it ready for the family as our month was not up and he had not had a chance to engage other servants which we did. " I wonder wot Mrs. Carter will say when she sees this!" I says to Eliza one day while we were getting unpacked. "I wonder wot Miss Harriet will say!" says she. Well, wot do you suppose Mrs. Carter did say ? That is the funniest thing of all. She had climbed up the four flight of stairs without [ 231 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY the lift and came puffing in the door and the first thing she says was: "How perfectly dear!" she says. "It is just like our flat in Piqua!" she says, and she threw herself down in a rocking chair by the window and looked out over the Hudson and says very softly: "I haven't felt so happy as I do now since I lived there." So Eliza and I slipped back into the little kitchen and as we sat there together we could hear Mrs. Carter arranging furniture and a-singing to herself as happy as could be and I says to Eliza: "Wot are you going to do, Eliza V And she says: "I don't know, Peter, but I was thinking of getting a place as hat checker in one of the big hotels at the dining-room door." And I said, why .? and she said : " Evelyn Raymond had a friend who was tall and fair and had such a job and she married a millionaire whose hat she used to check. They [ 232 ] SAFE AT ANCHOR like them tall and fair. I am tall and fair," she says. "Do you want to marry a millionaire?" I says. "Well, I don't want particular to marry a millionaire," she says, "but I don't want to die an old maid," she says, and she looked across the sink at me sort of weepy, and I says although I had not thought seriously of it before : "Neither do I, dear, and / like them tall and fair." And then all I remember is that she said "O, Peter!" and I took her in my arms and held her there so long that when we tiptoed to the parlor door Mrs. Carter had gone long ago. . . . Eliza has just said "O, Peter!" again for I laughed to myself just now when I wrote this and she looked over my shoulder and read wot I had written and tried to snatch the book away but I did not let her. Well, if I had not proposed to Eliza that afternoon I should never have found Lord Craven, for I took her out to dine and then to a [ 233 3 THE BUTLER'S STORY play which she said she had heard was a good one, and for the first time I bought seats in the orchestra. The play was all about the India mutiny and an orficer who is left behind when his regiment goes to the front, and was very pitiful, so that Eliza cried and I cried a little also, and then the orchestra began to play " God Save the King," and although nobody near me did so, I got on to my feet and stood up all alone. Well, a lot of the audience stared hard at me and some of them began to snicker and I got red as a lobster when all of a sudden I saw there was someone else standing up on the other side of the theatre just like me and my heart went out to this other Englishman though he was a stranger. He was slim and tall and his face was brown and clean cut and he had a moustache and when he turned I saw it was Lord Craven and he knew me at the same instant. Well it took less time than it does for me to write it to get to him arid we went out into the lobby and he told me how his cousin the Earl of Danforth had died very unexpected without heirs and [ 234 j SAFE AT ANCHOR how he now was the Earl himself and had plenty of money and was on his way back to England from Manitoba, and you must come with me, he says, and bring Eliza with you, for I had told him about her and how we had agreed to become man and wife that very afternoon. So that all things worked together for good, and if I had not told Miss Patricia to go into the library that time, she would not have made her father tell the truth, and he would not have lost his money, and Mrs. Carter would not have hired the flat, and I should not have married Eliza or taken her to the theatre and found Lord Craven, God bless him! So he wanted to know about everything and I told him all and how Miss Patricia was the noblest lady in the world and wot a fine fellow Mr. Amos was. "Gerard, the poet and dramatist.?" he says. "I know him well." "But," I says, "he does not really write anything to speak of, does he ?" "He wrote this play," says he, "and he will [ 235 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY make ten thousand founds out of it if he makes a cent!" "My eye!" I says. "Now who would ever imagine Mr. Amos making anything!" I says. So Lord Craven said that he would give us a cottage on the place and I must call to see him next day at his hotel, which I did. And who should be there but Mr. Amos and Miss Patricia and they were the happiest look- ing pair of people that ever you did see, and the three of them were all having tea in the corridor. So they bade me approach and Mr. Amos got up and laid his hand on my arm and says: "Ridges, I want to speak to you privately," and he was that solemn I began to be afraid I had done something to offend him so I says: " Very good, sir," and he led me into the cafe and sat me down at a table and ordered a pint of champagne and says very softly: "Ridges, I want to ask your permission to marry Miss Patricia." [236] SAFE AT ANCHOR And I was that surprised and overjoyed that I nearly lost my voice, but I seized my glass and I raised it and said: "Mr. Amos," I says, "God bless you both! God bless you!" And I drank it orf. Then Mr. Amos held out his hand and I took it hard and he says: "Thank you, Ridges. I promise you she will be the happiest woman in the world if I can make her so." So we went back and I smiled at Miss Patricia so that she might know that I knew, and then Lord Craven said he was going to get married himself in a week or two and he wanted Mr. Amos for best man because they had been at Oxford together and how the best thing would be for us all to go back to England on the same ship in each other's company. So I bade them adoo and went and told Eliza and she agreed that if we were going we might as well be married at once and have our honeymoon on the ocean; but there is no need to go into that part, [ 237 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY for her father who is the electrician in Astoria raised an orrid row and was very shirty about her marrying an Enghshman and leaving the country but her brother is a very decent young fellow. So in the end we were married and Lord Craven and Mr. Amos and Miss Patricia were at the wedding and kissed the bride, and I did not care in the least; and a few days later Miss Patricia became Mrs. Gerard and every- body except Miss Harriet was as jolly as if they had never lost their money, and Mr. Carter quite hilarious not to say elevated, and then I learned the reason that they had not got married before was because Mr. Amos had no money and Miss Patricia had and he was too proud, but now he had made a lot of money with his plays and poetry and she had none, but they had loved each other all along, and all the swellest people came to the wedding just as if nothing had hap- pened although it was a church affair and no breakfast afterwards except for the family. That is how we are here in Primrose Lodge which used to belong to the head gamekeeper in [238] SAFE AT ANCHOR the old days, and Aunt Jane is coming from Wapping-on-Velley to spend her declining years with us, which is better than having Eliza's father and mother if I do say it. The trip over was by no means unalloyed bliss, as they say in books, but it was not Eliza's fault but of my stomach. But now all is as happy as can be. Yesterday a letter came from New York from Evelyn Raymond telling us the latest news about the family and I will copy it in here: The St. Anthony, Broadway, May 6. Dear Little Eliza: Your nice note came duly to hand and I hasten to reply. You will doubtless be sur- prised to see that I have taken rooms here but an up- to-date actress must be a la mode. In a word, my dear little innocent Eliza, I have gone on the stage. Not in the chorus, O no! But really and truly on the stage, for I have a sort of fashion part in the Weber Company and wear clothes that would make that ridiculous Harriet Carter scream with envy. By the way, you will be interested to learn that the Carter family are really down and out and that Mr. Carter has gone to work again — in a bank. Some friends got him a job as third Vice-President of a [ 239 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY trust company — it must be a trust company! Mrs. Carter is keeping house in the flat you and Peter fixed up for her and I saw her the other day buying some tin pans at a department store. She was real nice when I spoke to her and said she could get them three cents cheaper than at some other place. She looked positively radiant with joy. I honestly don't think she ever was as happy before. The best joke of all is that she says that nasty cat of a Harriet is going to become a stenographer. And what do you think! Her wretched brother is in our company. On the level! Can you believe it! He does a sort of a Lord Dundreary part in the second act at eighteen per. But I have no use for him, although he has tried to make up to me and has asked me to supper several times. Little Willie is still at Groton and is going to remain there, and Mrs. Carter says they are going to send him to college if they have to eat beans six times a week to do it. The old woman is the stuff after all and I like her. She asked me to drop in if I ever was up her way; and I really think she meant it. I suppose Miss Patricia is enjoying herself immensely. She is the style that I suppose takes with the Britishers but I never cared for her particularly, although I know that you and Peter think the ground she walks on is sacred. But you two are a pair of old innocents an)Tvay. Give my love to Peter (or if you prefer it, Mister Ridges) and write me all about Lord Craven and Craven Hall and what [ 240 ] SAFE AT ANCHOR goes on and what the English swells are really like. Do you know I am beginning to believe that you and I never saw the real thing at all ? Good luck to you. With love from your old friend, EvELYN. P. S. My stage name is Doris Haselmere. That is quite a sporty letter for a parlor maid, isn't it ? But I fancy Providence meant her for a actress and I have no criticism to make if she keeps honest and is a good one. So here is wishing her luck. Next week Lord Craven is to be married to Lady Grace Hamilton, and while he is away on his honeymoon Miss Patricia and Mr. Amos are to spend theirs here and I and Eliza will have the pleasure of waiting on them. After that they are going to visit Lord Craven for a month more, so by the time they leave I shall be better able to stand the break. Maybe I shall keep a note book and maybe not. There is not nearly so much to write about here, everything being more settled. But wotever America may be otherwise it is a good place to get a wife and wotever the people may be like in general my [ 241 ] THE BUTLER'S STORY ten years in service there was a small price to pay for the sake of being with Miss Patricia who is the sweetest and loveliest woman in the world — except, of course, Eliza. THE END [ 242 ] BY ARTHUR TRAIN TRUE STORIES OF CRIME FROM THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE niuslrated. l2mo, $1.50 " The fascination of the detective story and the flavor of truth combine to give these stories a unique place in literature." — Montreal Gazette. "Each chapter recounts some peculiar and notable phase of criminal activity. It is a fascinating book for any one who loves the dramatic unfolding of a mystery." — Brooklyn Eagle. " He has a field of his own which he exploits cleverly, earnestly, and what is better than either from the reader's standpoint, interestingly." — Minneapolis Tribune. "The stories read like fiction rather than a tran- script from the criminal records." — Springfield Union. "He makes living entities of the characters and pre- sents them to the mind in their proper environ- ment." — Boston Globe. BY ARTHUR TRAIN THE PRISONER AT THE BAR SIDE LIGHTS ON THE ADMINISTRATION OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE 8vo. $1.50 net A new edition of this successful book containing an additional chapter dealing with insanity as a defence in criminal cases, an Index and a valuable Bibliography. Professor Wigmore, of Northwestern University, the leading authority on the law of evidence, has written a highly appreciative preface to this new edition. CONTENTS What Is Crime? The Trial of Felonies Who are the Real The Judge Criminals? The Jury The Arrest The Witness The Police Court The Verdict The Trial of Misdemeanors The Sentence The Grand Jury Women In the Courts The Law's Delays Tricks of the Trade Red Tape What Fosters Crime? Insanity as a Defence " He has succeeded in investing the topic with an interest considerably exceeding that of the ordinary novel." — New York Tribune. "There was need for just such a book as Arthur Train has given us. . . . It is a volume as entertaining as it is instructive, and it is packed with anecdotes drawn from the author's personal experiences or observation, or cur- rent among members of the New York Bar. The book deserves a careful reading." — Springfield Republican. BY ARTHUR TRAIN McAllister and his double Illustrated. 12mo. $1.50 "Since Richard Harding Davis wrote about Van Bibber there have been no short stories with a Man- hattan background more entertaining than those in Arthiu: Train's 'McAlhster and His Double.' They have a very superior lu-ban quality and show a fresh- ness of invention and delicacy of handling that are quite unusual in stories of the town." — JV. Y. Globe. "Aside from the entertainment afforded by the fun and nonsense of the stories, there is here and there a deep note struck that makes them worth considering seriously, a note of sympathy for the under dog, of pity and understanding for the poor wretches who are down, that gives the tales a strong human appeal." — Philadelphia Telegraph. "A spirited series of entertaining narratives of a somewhat original detective type." — Boston Transcript. "Mr. Train knows how to tell a good story, and understands the art of springing his climax at the psychological moment." — Nashville American. " The McAllister stories are entertaining from start to finish." — The Independent. "Written with a combined snap and humor that make them a very safe investment as a source of entertainment. " — Life. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS