MR. CRICHTON AND MR. LITTIMER
They were seated together, Mr. and Mrs. Crichton in the bar-parlour of their little public-house in the Harrow Road, at the more fashionable end, for which Mr. Crichton had himself invented the sign (in memory of his past experiences) of “The Case is Altered.” Mr. Crichton, too, was altered and yet the same. He wore one of the Earl’s old smoking-jackets, with a coronet still embroidered on the breast pocket—not, he said, out of anything so vulgar as ostentation, but as a sort of last link with the Upper House—but his patent leather boots had given place to carpet slippers, and his trousers, once so impeccable, were now baggy at the knees. Altogether he was an easier, more relaxed Crichton, freed as he was from the restraining, if respectful, criticism of the servants’ hall. Indeed, Miss Fisher, who had always hated him, hinted that he had become slightly Rabelaisian—a reference which she owed to mademoiselle—though she would not have dared to repeat the hint to Mrs. Crichton (néeTweeny). For marriage had in no degree abated Tweeny’s reverence for her Crichton, or rather, as old habit still impelled her to call him, her Guv.
The Guv. was at this moment comforting himself with a glass of port (from the wood) and thinking of that bin of ’47 he had helped the Earl to finish in past days. And now he was inhabiting a road where (at least at the other, the unfashionable, end) port was invariably “port wine.” Such are the vicissitudes of human affairs. Tweeny herself was guilty of the solecism, as was perhaps to be expected from a lady who, for her own drinking, preferred swipes. Though she had made great strides in her education under the Guv.’s guidance (she was now nearly into quadratic equations, and could say the dates of accession of the kings of England down to James II.), she still made sad havoc of her nominatives and verbs in the heat of conversation.
“A gent as wants to see the Guv.,” said the potboy, popping his head in at the bar-parlour door—the potboy, for Tweeny knew better than to have a barmaid about the place for the Guv. to cast a favourable eye on.
A not very clean card was handed in, inscribed:—
“Mr. Littimer,”
and the owner walked in after it. Or, rather, glided softly in, shutting the door after entry as delicately as though the inmates had just fallen into a sweet sleep on which their life depended. Mr. Littimer was an old-fashioned looking man, with mutton-chop whiskers, a “stock,” tied in a large bow, a long frock-coat, and tight trousers—the whole suggesting nothing of recent or evenmodern date, but, say, 1850. It was an appearance of intense respectability, of super-respectability, of that 1850 respectability which was so infinitely more respectable than any respectability of our own day. Mr. Crichton stared, as well he might, and washed his hands with invisible soap. Though, in fact, now middle-aged, he felt in this man’s presence extremely young. He clean forgot that he had been a King in Babylon. Indeed, for the first time in his life he, the consummate, the magisterial, the admirable Crichton, felt almost green.
“Mr. Crichton, sir,” said the visitor, with an apologetic inclination of the head, “I have ventured to take the great liberty of calling upon you, if you please, sir, and,” he added with another inclination of the head to Mrs. Crichton (who felt what she would herself have called flabbergasted), “ifyouplease, ma’am, as an old friend of your worthy father. He was butler at Mrs. Steerforth’s when I valeted poor Mr. James.” His eye fell, respectably, on Mr. Crichton’s port. “Ah!” he said, “hiswine was Madeira, but——” A second glass of port was thereupon placed on the table, and he sipped it respectably.
Mr. Crichton could only stare, speechless. All hisaplombhad gone. He gazed at a ship’s bucket, his most cherished island relic, which hung from the ceiling (as a shade for the electric light—one of his little mechanical ingenuities), and wondered whether he evercouldhave put anybody’s head in it. Hisphilosophy was, for once, at fault. He knew, none better, that “nature” had made us all unequal, dividing us up into earls and butlers and tweenies, but now for the first time it dawned upon him that “nature” had made us unequally respectable. Here was something more respectable, vastly more respectable, than himself; respectable not in the grand but in the sublime manner.
He could not guess his visitor’s thoughts, and it was well for his peace of mind that he could not. For Mr. Littimer’s thoughts were, respectably, paternal. He thought of Mr. Crichton, sen., and still more of the senior Mrs. Crichton, once “own woman” to Mrs. Steerforth. Ah! those old days and those old loves! How sad and bad and mad it was—for Mr. Littimer’s poet was Browning, as his host’s was Henley, as suited the difference in their dates—and how they had deceived old Crichton between them! So this washisboy, his, Littimer’s, though no one knew it save himself and the dead woman! And as he gazed, with respectable fondness, at this image, modernized, modified, subdued, of his own respectability, he reflected that there was something in heredity, after all. And he smiled, respectably, as he remembered his boy’s opinion that the union of butler and lady’s maid was perhaps the happiest of all combinations. Perhaps, yes; but without any perhaps, if the combination included the valet.
Unhappy, on the other hand, were those combinationsfrom which valets were pointedly excluded. There was that outrageous young person whom Mr. James left behind at Naples and who turned upon him, the respectable Littimer, like a fury, when he was prepared to overlook her past in honourable marriage.
His meditations were interrupted by Mrs. Crichton, who had been mentally piecing together her recollections of “David Copperfield”—her Guv. had given her a Dickens course—and had now arrived at a conclusion. “Axin’ yer pardon, mister,” she said (being still, as we have stated, a little vulgar when excited), “but if you was valet to Mr. James Steerforth, you’re the man as ’elped ’im to ruin that pore gal, and as afterwards went to quod for stealin’. I blushes”—here her eye fell on the Guv., who quietly dropped the correction “blush”—“Iblushfor yer, Mr. Littimer.” “Ah, ma’am,” Mr. Littimer respectably apologized, “I attribute my past follies entirely to having lived a thoughtless life in the service of young men; and to having allowed myself to be led by them into weaknesses, which I had not the strength to resist.”
“And that, I venture to suggest, ma’am,” he respectably continued, “is why your worthy husband has been so much more fortunate in the world than myself. We are both respectable, if I may say so, patterns of respectability” (Crichton coloured with gratification at this compliment from the Master), “and yet our respectability has brought us verydifferent fates. And why, if you please, ma’am? Because I have served the young, while he has served the old—for I believe, ma’am, the most noble the Earl of Loam is long past the meridian. Besides, ma’am, we Early Victorians had not your husband’s educational advantages. There were no Board schools for me. Not that I’m complaining, ma’am. We could still teach the young ’uns a thing or two about respectability.” And so with a proud humility (and an intuition that there was to be no more port) he took his leave, again shutting the door with the utmost delicacy. He was, in truth, well content. He had seen his boy. The sacred lamp of respectability was not out.
But Mr. Crichton sat in a maze, still washing his hands with invisible soap.