Ladies and Gentlemen

“A butler?”

“Yes, instead of a maid. You’ll pardon the suggestion but I was thinking that Mr. Boyce-Upchurch being a foreigner and accustomed, of course, to butlers, and a butler giving a sort of air – a tone, as it were – to a household, that perhaps – well – ”

They had fallen on fertile ground, those seeds. They were sprouting, germinating. Before the massive shoulders of the Ingleglade Woman’s Club’s efficient recording secretary had vanished down the bowery and winding reaches of Edgecliff Avenue they were putting forth small green speculative shoots through Mrs. Gridley’s mind. Always and ever, from the very first days of her married life, Mrs. Gridley had cherished in the back of her mind a picture of an establishment in which the butler, a figure of dignity and poise and gray striped trousers in the daytime but full-dress by night, would be the chief of staff. As what woman has not? And now for the gratifying of that secret ambition she had an excuse and a reason.

Section Two of this narrative brings us to another conversation. At this stage the narrative seems somehow to fall naturally into sections, but one has a premonition that toward the last it will become a thing of cutbacks and close-ups and iris-ins and fade-outs, like a movie. It brings us to this other conversation, which passed over the telephone between Mrs. Gridley and her brother Mr. Oliver Braid.

“Well, Dumplings,” said that gentleman, speaking at noon of Tuesday from his office, “the hellish deed is done!”

“You got one then?” she answered eagerly.

“Got one? Madam, you wrong me and you low-rate him. I got the One and only One – the Original One. The only misleading thing about him is his name. Be prepared for a pleasant shock. It’s Launcelot Ditto. I ask you to let that soak into your tissues and be absorbed by the system. Only Ditto means more of the same and if I’m any judge, there aren’t any more at home like him and there never will be. But the Launcelot part fits like a union suit.

“Oh, girl, I’m telling you he’s got everything, including the adenoids. Not the puny domestic brand of our own faulty and deficient land, mind you, but the large, super-extra-fine export, golden-russet adenoid of that favored island whose boast is that Britons never shall be slaves except to catarrh. And he’s as solemn as a Masonic funeral. And he stepped right out of a book by way of the stage. He ought to be serving strawberries and Devonshire cream on the terrace to the curate of St. Ives and the dear old Dowager Duchess of What-you-may-call-’em, while the haw-haw blooms in the hedgerow. He ought to be coming on at the beginning of Act One to answer the telephone and pat the sofa pillows smooth and fold up ‘The Pink ’Un,’ and sigh deeply because the Young Marster is going to the dogs. He ought to be outlining the plot to a housekeeper in rustling black silk named Meadows.”

“Ollie Braid, are you delirious?”

“Not at all. I am dazed, dazzled, blinded, but I am not delirious. I can half shut my eyes and see him in his hours of ease sitting in our buttery perusing that sprightly volume with full-page illustrations entitled ‘The Stately Homes of Old England.’ Sounds pretty good, eh what? Good – hell! He’s perfect. He certainly ought to do a lot for us socially over there in Ingleglade. I can half shut ’em again and see the local peasantry turning a lovely pea-green with envy as he issues forth on the front lawn to set up the archery butts so that we may practice up on our butting. That’s another place where the buttery will come in handy.”

“He was willing to come out, then?”

“Well, at first he did balk a little on the idea of demeaning himself by accepting a position with the lower or commuting classes. The country, yes; the town, perhaps, but the environs – well, hardly. That was his attitude. But with my lilting love-song I won him, he-siren that I am. I told him Ingleglade was not really suburban but merely outlying, if one gets what one means. That wasn’t deception, that was diplomacy. Anyhow, haven’t we got some of the outlyingest real-estate dealers in the entire state of New Jersey? Do we not combine all the drawbacks of the city with few or none of the advantages of the country? I often sit and wonder whence comes this magic power of mine for bending strong natures to my will. The crowning stroke was when I told him Boyce-Upchurch was so shortly to honor us. That won him. He admires Boyce-Upchurch tremendously. Not his books – he hasn’t read ’em – but it seems he knows Boyce-Upchurch’s uncle, who’s an archduke or a belted earl or something well up among the face-cards.”

“You talk too much, Oliver. You think you’re funny and you aren’t.”

“Oh, but, madam – ”

“Shut up a minute! He has references, of course?”

“Fair lady, sweet dame, I plight you my solemn word that with the references he’s got from noble British families he could be our ambassador to the Court of St. James the day after he took out his naturalization papers. He’s temporarily unattached but that’s because he hasn’t been able to find anybody worthy of him. He’s only taking us on trial. Why hark ye, lass, he used to work for the ’Un’rable ’Urrible ’Ubbs. He’s got the documents to prove it.”

“The what?”

“I’m merely telling you what he said. It didn’t sound like a name to me, either, at first. But now it’s beginning to grow on me; I may make a song out of it.”

“When will he be out?”

“This very night. I’m chaperoning him personally. We are to meet at the ferry, and I’m to wear a primrose in my buttonhole in case he’s forgotten how I look. I’m reading up now on the history of the Norman Conquest. I want to be prepared to meet him on his own ground should he care for conversation.”

“Ollie, you always were an idiot.”

“Dear wench, ’tis a family failing. I have a sister, a flower-like slip of a thing, but, alas, she suffers from pollen in the pod.”

“And what’s more, she’s going to give you a hard slap the first chance.” Over the line her voice took on an uncertain tone. “Of course I know you’re exaggerating frightfully but – ”

“As regards Launcelot, you couldn’t exaggerate. He confounds the powers of description. He baffles the most inventive imagination. He – ”

“Oh, do listen! All at once I’m beginning to worry about Norah. I hadn’t thought of her until right now.”

“What of Norah?”

“Well, from what you say and even making allowances for your romancing, this man must be very English. And Norah’s so – so Irish. Delia is, too, for that matter. But especially Norah.”

“Strange, but I had noticed that myself about our Norah.”

“Notice it? – I should say. She calls the English – what is it she calls them?”

“Black-and-Tans. Also Saxon oppressors. Also a name which is pronounced by hissing first and then gritting the teeth in a bitter manner. I think it’s an old Gaelic word signifying Oliver Cromwell. You may recall having heard that Norah has a brother who had some personal misunderstanding with the authorities in Dublin in the year 1916. He became at that time very seriously antagonized toward them. And it looks to me as though Norah was inclined to take sides in the controversy.”

“Naturally. But she may make trouble. I hadn’t thought of that before. And if he should happen to do anything or say anything to arouse her or if she should take one of her grudges against Mr. Boyce-Upchurch – oh, I’m scared, Oliver!”

“Prithee be blithe and gay. Norah and I understand each other. We have a bond between us or will have one as soon as I tell her privately that I’m contributing to a fund for financing an uprising on the part of those poor down-trodden Hindus. Immediately on my arrival this evening I’ll take Norah apart and – ”

“You’ll do what?”

“Don’t worry. I’m going to put her back together again, so you’d never notice it. But I’ll take her apart and beg her for my sake to remain calm, cool, and collected. You leave Norah to me.”

“I suppose I’ll have to; there’s nothing else to be done. And, Oliver, you may be a born idiot but just the same you’re a dear for going to all this trouble on my account and I do appreciate it. There – I’m throwing you a kiss by wire.”

“Kindly confine yourself to appreciating Launcelot – that, God wot, will be reward enough for me, fond heart. And in case either our butler or our guest, or both of them, should desire to call the tenants in from the estate, all to stand and join in singing the Royal Anthem, please remember how it goes – God Save the King until Norah’s Brother Can Get at Him!”

Ditto shifted from civilian garb and served dinner that evening. It became a meal that was more than a meal; it became a ceremonial. There was a formalism to it, there was pomp and circumstance. The passing of a dish was invested with a ritualistic essence. Under Ditto’s ministrations so simple a dessert as cold rice pudding took on a new meaning. One wondered what Ditto could have done with a fancy ice. One felt that merely with a loaf of bread and a jug of wine and none of the other ingredients of Old Omar’s recipe for a pleasant evening, he nevertheless could have fabricated the plausible illusion of a banquet of courses. Mrs. Gridley was thrilled to her marrows – possibly a trifle self-conscious but thrilled.

After dinner and a visit to the service wing, Mr. Braid sought out his sister on the veranda where she was doing what most of her sister-villagers of parched Ingleglade were doing at that same hour – wishing for rain.

“Well, Dumplings,” he said, “you may continue to be your own serene self. In me behold a special plenipotentiary doing plenipotenching by the day, week, or job, satisfaction guaranteed or money refunded. I’ve just had a little heart-to-heart chat with Norah and there isn’t a cloud in the sky as large as a man’s hand.”

“I wish there were – this terrible drought!” she said, her thoughts divided between the two concerns uppermost in her mind. “What did you say to her?”

“I approached the subject with my customary tact. With a significant glance toward the visiting nobleman I reminded Norah that blood was thicker than water, to which she piously responded by thanking God for three thousand miles of the water. Still, I think she’s going to keep the peace. For the moment, she’s impressed, or shall I say fascinated. Ditto is high-hatting her something scandalous, and she’s taking it. For all our Norah’s democratic principles she evidently carries in her blood the taint of a lurking admiration for those having an aristocratic bearing, and Ditto is satisfying the treasonable instinct which until now she has had no chance to gratify – at least, not while living with us. As for Delia, that shameless hussy is licking the spoon and begging for more. She’s a traitor to United Ireland and the memory of Daniel O’Connell.

“Mind you, I’m not predicting that the spell will endure. The ancient feud may blaze up. We may yet have a race war in our kitchen. For all you know, you may at this moment be sitting pretty on a seething volcano; but unless something unforeseen occurs I think I may safely promise you peace and harmony, during the great event which is about to ensue in our hitherto simple lives.

“For, as I said just now, Norah is under a thrall – temporary perhaps but a thrall just the same. Well, I confess to being all thralled-up myself. That certainly was a high-church dinner – that one tonight was. Several times I was almost overcome by a well-nigh irrepressible temptation to get up and ask Ditto to take my place and let me pass a few things to him.”

“I don’t believe there ever has been such a drought,” said Mrs. Gridley.

“Ho, hum, well, I suppose we’ll all get used to this grandeur in time,” said Mr. Braid. “I wonder if he is going to put on the full vestments every night no matter whether we have company or not? I wish on nights when we do have very special company he’d loan me his canonicals and wear mine. I expect he’d regard it as presuming if I asked for the address of his tailor? What do you think, Dumplings?”

“I wish it would rain,” said Mrs. Gridley. “And I hope and pray Norah doesn’t fly off into one of her tantrums. I wonder does Mr. Boyce-Upchurch like Thousand Islands dressing or the Russian better? What were you just saying, Ollie?”

Mr. Braid tapped his skull with his forefinger.

“Ah, the family failing,” he murmured, “that dread curse which afflicts our line! With some of the inmates it day by day grows worse. And there’s nothing to be done – it’s congenital.”

“I expect the best thing to do is just to take a chance on the Russian,” said Mrs. Gridley. “If he doesn’t like it, why he doesn’t like it and I can’t help myself, I didn’t catch what you said just then, Ollie?”

“Abstraction overcomes the victim; the mind wanders; the reason totters,” said Mr. Braid. “By the way, I wonder if Ditto would care to have his room brightened with a group view of the Royal Family – the King in shooting costume, the Queen wearing the sort of hat that the King would probably like to shoot; the lesser members grouped about? You know the kind of thing I mean.”