I was thankful when I was ushered into the drawing-room and cooled off in the icy stare of the other guests--some thirty women and two men.
Nothing betrayed that I was a "growler" lady as I took the limp hand of my hostess, who favoured me with a speechless smile. This she temporarily detached from a superior man in superior garments, such as, to do them justice, Englishmen only know how to wear. He was very perfect, and in one of his blank eyes he wore a glass.
I don't know his name, but I shall never forget him. He was evidently one of the lilies of the field who only know of four-wheelers by hearsay. Whether our hostess stopped smiling long enough to murmur an introduction I do not know, but we were quite lost among the furniture, and as much thrown on each other's society as if we were on a desert island. So when he uttered inquiringly something that sounded like "yum," I said desperately, knowing it could strike no answering chord, "I came in a four-wheeler; it requires a good deal of moral courage."
Then I stopped, blushing and embarrassed. How would he express his scorn! I stepped aside to give him a chance to vanish out of my plebeian neighbourhood; but, instead, said this gallant Englishman, bringing his eyeglass to bear on me, "Ow--ow--really? So did I. Never drive in anything else." Yes, there are heroes even in London drawing-rooms.
Has any one ever heard of a footman with wife and children? Can that cast-iron countenance ever unbend? Does that vacant look hide mighty thoughts, or does it hide nothing? Is a footman himself ever scorned? I do hope he is, for he has made me suffer so much. I have sometimes thought that if I owned a footman I should be too proud to live; yet on studying the faces of my fellow men so blessed, I find that they are not proud, but quite modest, and sometimes even shabby.
Yes, the owners of footmen are mostly less prosperous in appearance than their servants, while the possessor of a butler and footmen galore looks quite poor. But I do wonder where footmen go when they are old? I never saw an old footman but once, and that was in a registry office, a dim sanctuary, dotted by desks and ornamented by agitated ladies.
The awful temporary power of registry office clerks, how they do make one quail! There was about the old footman a fictitious smartness, a youthfulness so out of keeping with his haggard face that it gave me a shock. For once I was sorry that the biter was bit, and that the stony-hearted clerk behind his desk imparted his wisdom with such brevity and disdain.