Mrs Steptoe's embarrassment expressed itself in an uneasy titter.
She was beginning to feel unequal to the situation. Her residence in Great Britain had done much to put her abreast of the customs of the country—for weeks she had been eating her boiled eggs out of the shell instead of mashed up in a glass, and Howard was never allowed to fasten the bottom button of his waistcoat—but she knew that there were still weak spots in her equipment, and one of these was that she had not yet quite got the hang of English humour. Sometimes she could grab it off the bat, but sometimes—as now—it got past her.
"Is that the latest gag?" she as ked, with what she hoped was adequate sprightliness.
"Madam?"
"Yes, calling women that, like men in the old novels saying 'Dear Lady.' It's kind of cute, "said Mrs Steptoe musingly, "but I'm not sure I really like it. It makes you sound as if you were a valet or something. "
I am, madam.
There ca me to Mrs Steptoe an unworthy suspicion. Joss still looked like the son of some noble house, but she now found herself regarding him as the son of a noble house who has had a couple.
''I'm afraid you will think me very dumb, "she said coldly, "but I don't quite see the joke. ''
"No joke, madam. I am Mr. Steptoe's new valet.''
"What! "
"Yes, madam. Miss Fairmile engaged me this morning."
There is no anguish so acute as that experienced by a woman of strong views on class distinctions, who, having lavished all the charm o f her best manner on a supposed scion of the nobility, discovers that he is the latest addition to her domestic staff. And Mrs Steptoe would undoubtedly have given eloquent expression to her feelings had she not, just as she was about to begin, caught Joss 's eye. It was a strong, steady eye, the eye of a man who for two years had given J. B. Duff look for look, and if not actually made him wilt at least confined him reasonably closely to the decencies o f debate. It impressed Mrs Steptoe. She could recognize personality when she saw it.
Ha rd, keen, practical woman though she was , the chatelaine of Claines Hall ha d a wistful, castles-in-the-air-building side to her nature. Ever since she had landed in England she had dreamed of one day securing a valet of the right sort, a gentleman's personal gentleman of blood and iron, capable of sticking his chin out at her Howard and making him play ball. And here, unless s he had been totally deceived by a promising exterior, he was.
Her glance softened. An instant before she could have been mistaken for a rattlesnake about to strike. Her air now became that of a rattlesnake which is prepared to reserve its judgment till it has heard all the facts,
"Oh?" she said.
"Yes, madam."
"Chibnall should have taken you to the servants' hall,"
Yes, madam.
"Still, now you are here—"
"Precisely, madam. No doubt you wish to give me certain hints and instructions with regard to my duties." Joss coughed discreetly. "I understand from Miss Fairmile, madam, that Mr Steptoe is inclined to be a little difficult."
It was the very point which Mrs Steptoe was anxious to discuss.
"That's right," she said. "He gets rough with his valets."
"Indeed, madam?"
"He throws a scare into them, and they quit. The only one so far that's stayed as long as two weeks was the fellow before you.
I had hopes of him, but Mr Steptoe finally got him down. He didn't like Mr Steptoe rubbing his nose on his shirt front."
This interested Joss. He had not known that he was taking service under a man with an India-rubber neck.
"Is Mr Steptoe a contortionist?"
"You don't get me. It was the fellow before you's nose that Mr Steptoe rubbed on Mr Steptoe's shirt front. The fellow before you had laid out a stiff-bosomed shirt for him to wear at dinner, and Mr Steptoe doesn't like stiff-bosomed shirts. So he rubbed the fellow before you' s nose on it."
"I see, madam. "
"So there you are. That's what you're up against."
"I quite appreciate the situation, madam. But I view it without concern. This will not be the first time I have been in the employment of a difficult gentleman."
"And you made out all right?"
"Entirely satisfactorily, madam."
Mrs Steptoe's last lingering doubts were removed. If she still bore any resemblance to a rattlesnake it was to one which has heard the voice of conscience and decided to simmer down and spend a quiet evening with the boys. This was the superman she had dreamed of. She resolved to conceal nothing from him, but to give him the low-down in overflowing measure.
"Well, that's fine," she said. "You've taken a weight off my mind.
I'm beginning to think you'll be able to swing this job. It's not everybody that can handle Mr Steptoe when he's going good, but you seem to have what it takes. You see, the whole trouble is this.
Mind you, this is strictly off the record. I wouldn't want to be quoted.
"I quite understand, madam."
"Between ourselves, then, for your guidance, Mr Steptoe is a hick."
"Indeed, madam."
"He has no natural sense of dignity. I can't seem to drive it into his nut that he's got a position to keep up. Only the other day I caught him in the stable yard, shooting craps with my chauffeur."
Tut, madam.
"Yes. I heard a voice yelling, 'Baby needs new shoes!' and there he was."
"Dear, dear, madam."
"And he hates dressing for dinner. He says collars scratch his neck and he can't stand for the way stiff-bosomed shirts go pop when he breathes. You see, he was raised all wrong. Till I married him, the only time he ever saw a stiff-bosomed shirt was when the referee was bending over him, counting ten."
"Mr Steptoe was a boxer?"
"Preliminary bouts on the Pacific coast. The first time I ever saw him was at the American Legion stadium in Hollywood. He was getting the tar whaled out of him by a fellow called Wildcat Wix."
This relieved Joss somewhat. He was prepared to take the rough with the smooth, but it was nice to feel that he was not corning up against an irritable world's champion.
"Well, you know what smalltime box-fighters are. They get the pork-and-beans outlook and don't seem able to shake it off. So I'm relying on you to be very firm with him. Tonight particularly.
There's one or two really nice people expected to dinner, and I wouldn't put it past Mr Steptoe, if left to his own unbridled instincts to show up in a turtle-neck sweater. And now I'll ring for Chibnall to take you to your room. I hope you'll be comfortable."
"Thank you, madam."
"Watch Mr Steptoe's shoes. Take your eye off him for a second, and he'll be corning down to dinner in sneakers."
"I will be very vigilant, madam."
''I'm sure you will. Oh, Chibnall," said Mrs Steptoe, "this is Weatherby, Mr Steptoe's new valet. Will you show him to his room?"
In stating that there is no anguish so acute as that which is experienced by a hostess who mistakes a member of her staff for a scion of the nobility, we were guilty of an error. It is equalled, if not surpassed, by that of a butler of haughty spirit who finds that
he has been calling a fellow-toiler "sir." It was with burning eyes and resentment in every feature that Chibnall turned on Joss as the door closed behind them. Only the fact that Joss's five-pound note was nestling in his trouser-pocket restrained him from the most violent form of rebuke.
"Why didn't you tell me who you were?" he demanded.
"You never asked me," said Joss.
"Bowling up to the front door in your car as if you had bought the place!"
"The wrong note, you think? Yes, I suppose you're right. Here, where are we going?"
"I was instructed to show your lordship your lordship's room," said Chibnall, whose satire, though good, was always inclined to be a little on the heavy side. "Perhaps your lordship will be · so obliging as to pick up your lordship's feet and follow me."
They had left behind the soft rugs and Chippendale furni
ture of the ruling classes and had come into a barren land of uncarpeted stairs and passages smelling of yellow soap. Joss found his spirits sinking. He felt like Dante being shown through the Inferno by Virgil. And when Virgil threw open a door in the very heart of the yellow-soap zone, revealing a small bedroom with an iron bedstead and a cracked pitcher standing in a chipped bowl, he shook his head decidedly.
,
"Oh, no, no, no," he said. "Oh, no, no, no, no, no."
"I beg your pardon?"
"This will never do. Haven't you something better than this?"
"Perhaps you'd like a private bath?"
"A private bath, of course," said Joss. "And a few good prints on the walls and a decent armchair. Two armchairs, in fact, because I am hoping that you will often look in on me for a smoke and a chat when we are off duty."
A sharp, whistling intake of breath at his side told him that he had been too abrupt. He felt that he should have remembered that preliminaries are essential to these negotiations.
"I wonder," he said, taking a five-pound note from his pocket, "if you would be interested in another of these? Perhaps you are a collector?"
There was a long pause, during which Chibnall, the man, wrestled with Chibnall, the butler. The man wished to fling the five-pound note in Joss's face; the butler was in favour of trousering it.
The latter won.
"Thanks," he said.
"You see," Joss explained, "Mrs Steptoe made such a point of telling me to be comfortable. I wouldn't like to disappoint her.
And I ought to tell you that I have not always been as you see me now. Until recently I lived in an atmosphere of refinement, even luxury. In fact, I dwelt in marble halls with vassals and serfs at my side. I can't mention names, even to you, but if I were to reveal the identity of the titled father who cut me off with a shilling for refusing to marry the girl he had chosen for me you would be staggered."
It was as if Chibnall had suddenly seen light in the darkness.
Subconsciously, he realized now, some such explanation of these peculiar goings-on had already begun to suggest itself. He was a great reader of novelettes and had often argued their merits with Miss Pym, who preferred thrillers. The situation which Joss had outlined was not a new one to him. He had come across it not only in Hyacinth but in Mark Delamere, Gentleman, and The World Well Lost.
"Indeed, sir?"
"That's what makes me a little fussy."
"I quite understand, sir."
"Who arranges about the bedrooms here?"
"The housekeeper, sir."
"She should be able to find me something suitable?"
"Unquestionably, sir. There are a number of unoccupied guest rooms."
"Then lead me to her. In fact, you had better assemble the whole staff. I should like to address them on an important point of policy."
It was some half-hour later, as Joss sat in the servants' hall enjoying a pleasant rubber of bridge with Mrs Barlow, the housekeeper, Mrs Ellis, the cook, and Chibnall, that there peeled through the regions below stairs the sound of a bell. It gave the impression that somebody with a powerful thumb had placed that thumb on the button and kept it there.
"Mr Steptoe," said Chibnall, who was dummy.
Joss sighed. Enthusiastically supported by his partner, he had just bid little slam in hearts and looked like making it.
"A nuisance," he said. "But inevitable, I suppose. Perhaps you would come and show me the way."
The door of · Mr Steptoe's bedroom, when they reached it, was ajar, and from within there came the restless movement of some heavy body, suggesting either that an elephant had got loose or that Mr Steptoe was pacing the floor. It was a sinister sound, and Chibnall's eyes, as they met Joss's, were alive with respectful pity.
Chibnall had seen so many valets enter that room, only to totter out shaking in every limb and groping their way blindly, like guests
coming away from a Lord Mayor's Banquet-or even, as in the case of the fellow before you, bleeding profusely at the nose.
Quickly shaking Joss's band, he tiptoed off.
Joss pushed the door open and went in. It seemed to him that the early stages of his first interview with his new employer might be marked by a little friction. Nor was he mistaken. One glance at the latter was enough to show him that Mr Steptoe was not at his sunniest.
As a matter of fact, nobody who had known him only since his arrival in England had ever seen Howard Steptoe sunny. He was, as has already been indicated by his demeanour at the breakfast table, a soured and disillusioned man.
When a wealthy widow, infatuated by his robust charms, had removed him from the pork-and-beans surroundings in which he had passed his formative years Howard ( "Mugsy" ) Steptoe had supposed that he was about to sit on top of the world. And here he was in a hell of valets, starched collars, tea parties, County society and companions who were so good for him, like Lord Holbeton. A rude awakening.
Today he had been hotting up ever since lunch. It was over the luncheon table, it will be remembered, that Mrs Steptoe had told him of Mr Duff's offer for the portrait of Mrs Chavender. And when a man, sorely in need of ready cash, hears that his wife has turned down a dazzling offer for a portrait, belonging to himself, on which he would have put an outside price of thirty cents, he is apt, even if of a mild and equable temperament, to chafe pretty considerably. Mr Steptoe, who was not mild and equable, had chafed like a gumboil.
And about half an hour ago he had met Sally and learned from her that a new valet had arrived at Claines Hall. Just when he had been congratulating himself on having stamped this evil out.
Howard Steptoe was waiting for this valet.
"Good evening, sir," said Joss. "You rang?"
He found himself impressed by the other's physique and was surprised that it had never carried him beyond preliminary bouts on the Pacific coast. Faulty footwork, he presumed.
There was a snowy shirt lying on the bed. Mr Steptoe pointed a bananalike finger at it-emotionally, for it represented to him the last straw.
"You!"
"Sir?"
"See that shirt?"
''Yes sir."
"Stiff."
"Precisely, sir."
"Well, take it away, or I'll make you eat it."
Joss felt that the moment had come to be firm. There was a compelling steadiness in the eye which he fixed on the fermenting man.
"Steptoe," he said quietly, "you will wear your nice shirt."
Chapter VIII
THERE WAS A SILENCE. Mr Steptoe's vast frame had become afflicted by what looked like a palsy. He moved; he stirred; he seemed to feel the thrill of life along his keel. His hands had bunched themselves into fists, and he breathed tensely through his squashed nose.
"What?" he muttered throatily. "Wassat you said?"
Joss repeated his observation. He had shifted his position slightly, so as to place a substantial chair between them, and had taken from the mantelpiece a stout and serviceable vase-just in case. He was pretty confident of being able to settle this dispute through the channels of diplomacy, but there was no harm in being prepared.
"I'll break you into little bits."
"Don't be silly. What use would I be in little bits?"
A bitter smile disturbed for an instant the tenseness of Mr Steptoe's lips.
"Ha!" he said. "Smart guy, huh?"
Joss slapped his thigh.
"1 knew you were going to say that."
"Is that so?"
"Either that or 'Wise guy, huh?' I was as sure of it as I am that I have in my pocket the IOUs for the money you lost to the cook at craps."
"Cheese!" said Mr Steptoe, tottering on his base.
It was about a week since Howard Steptoe, in the hope of picking up a little pocket money, had started teaching the domestic staff this fascinating game and in a black hour had come up against Mrs Ellis, the cook, who possessed a natural aptitude for it. This very evening he had been compelled to ask her to accept another promissory
note for sixteen shillings, bringing his obligations up to the colossal figure of six pounds, eight and twopence.·
"And when I think what Mrs Steptoe is going to say when I show them to her," said Joss, "I shudder."
So did Mr Steptoe. He shuddered from stem to stern.
The fear lest this evidence of his sinning might some day find its way to Mrs Steptoe had haunted Mugsy's dreams for a week.