"My name, ma"am," he replied, "is B-r-i-n-d-l-e-b-u-r-y."
"Brindlebury?"
"p.r.o.nounced, "Brinber"--the old Suss.e.x name with which, ma"am, I have no doubt you, as a student of history--"
Mrs. Falkener turned to Crane.
"I think you will have trouble with that boy," she said. "He is inclined to be impertinent."
Crane looked at the boy over her head, and the boy, out of a pair of twinkling gray eyes, looked back. They both managed to look away again before a smile had been actually exchanged, but Crane found himself making use for the third time of his favorite formula:
"Oh, I think I"ll find him all right."
Mrs. Falkener, remembering the pitiable weakness of men, again waved her hand.
"They may go now," she said to Reed, who hastily shepherded the four back again into the back office. When they were alone, she turned to Crane and said with the utmost conviction:
"My dear Burton, none of those servants will do--except the butler, who appears to be a thoroughly competent person. But those young women--they may have been anything. Did you not observe that their nails had been manicured?"
Crane stammered slightly, for the fact had not escaped him, in connection, at least, with one of the young women.
"Don"t--don"t cooks ever manicure their nails?" he said. "It seems rather a good idea to me."
Reed, who was once more approaching, caught these last words.
"Ah," he said, "you were speaking of the manicuring of servants"
nails--"
Mrs. Falkener gave him a severe look.
"I was advising Mr. Crane not to engage any one but the butler."
"Indeed, how very interesting," said Reed. "Your judgment in the matter is very valuable, madame, I know, but perhaps you do not sufficiently emphasize the difficulties of getting any servants at all in this part of the country. In fact, I could not undertake, if these are not engaged--"
"Well, I could," said the lady. "I could telegraph to New York to my own intelligence office and have three really competent people here by to-morrow evening."
For a moment Reed looked profoundly distressed, and then he went on:
"Exactly, I have no doubt, madame. But what I was about to say was that I could not undertake to rent the Revelly house to a staff of unknown Northern servants. You see, these two young women have been practically brought up in the household of Mrs. Crosslett-Billington--an old family friend of the Revellys--and they know they would take care of things in the way they are accustomed to--"
"Of course, of course, very natural," said Crane. "I quite agree. I"m willing to give these people a chance. Of course, Mrs. Falkener, I don"t know as much about these things as you do, but it"s only for a few weeks, and as for their nails--"
"Oh, I can explain that," cried Reed; "in fact, I should have done so at the start. It"s an idiosyncrasy of Mr. Billington"s. He insists that all the servants in the house should be manicured, particularly those who wait on table, or have anything to do with touching the food."
Mrs. Falkener compressed her lips till they were nothing but a seam in her face.
"Humph!" she said again, and without another word she turned and swept out of the office.
Left alone, the two men stood silent, without even looking at each other, and finally it was Crane who observed mildly:
"Well, you know, they are a little queer in some ways--"
"Take my word for it," said Reed, earnestly, "you will make no mistake in engaging them all--except that boy, but you can manage him, I have no doubt. As for the cook, you will be surprised. Her cooking is famous in three counties, I a.s.sure you."
An instant later, the lease was duly signed.
When the motor was safely on its way back to Washington, Mrs. Falkener gave her companions on the back seat the benefit of her own impression.
One was her daughter, a muscular, dark-eyed girl, who imagined that she had thoroughly emanc.i.p.ated herself from her mother"s dominance because she had established a different field of interest. She loved out-of-door sport of all kinds, particularly hunting, and was as keen and competent about them as her mother was about household management. The two respected each other"s abilities, and managed to lead an affectionate life in common.
The man on the back seat was Solon Tucker--Crane"s lawyer, by inheritance rather than by choice. He was a thin, erect man, with a narrow head and that expression of mouth at once hard and subtle that the Law writes on so many men"s faces. His mind was excellently clear, his manner reserved, and his invariable presupposition that all human beings except himself were likely to make fools of themselves. He had, however, immense respect for Mrs. Falkener"s opinions on any subject except law--on which he respected n.o.body"s opinions but his own, least of all those of judges; and he believed that nothing would so effectively lighten his own responsibilities in regard to Crane as to marry him to Mrs. Falkener"s daughter, an idea in which Mrs. Falkener cordially agreed.
"You must make a point of staying with him, Solon," she was now murmuring into that gentleman"s rather large ear, "if, as I fear, he actually takes this house. You have never seen such an extraordinary group of servants--except the butler. Do you suppose it could be a plot, a blackmailing scheme of some sort? The cook--Well, my dear Solon, a pocket Venus, a stage ingenue, with manicured nails! He was determined to engage her from the first. It seems very unsafe to me. A bachelor of Burton"s means. You must stay by him, Solon. In fact," she added, "I think we had better both stay by him. Poor boy, he has no idea of taking care of himself."
"He can be very obstinate," said his lawyer. "But I fancy you exaggerate the dangers. You are unaccustomed to any but the very highest type of English servant. They are probably nothing worse than incompetent."
"Wait till you see the cook!" answered Mrs. Falkener portentously.
Tucker looked away over the darkening landscape.
"Dear me," he thought to himself. "What a mountain she makes of a mole-hill! How every one exaggerates--except trained minds!"
In Tucker"s opinion all trained minds were legal.
II
ON the following Monday, late in the afternoon, the old Revelly house was awaiting its new master. Already hunters, ponies, two-wheeled carts, an extra motor, to say nothing of grooms, stable-boys, and a tremendous head coachman, had arrived and were making the stable yards resound as they had not done for seventy years. But they had nothing to do with the household staff. They were all to be boarded by the coachman"s wife who was installed in the gardener"s cottage.
The house, with its tall pillared portico and flat roofed wings, lost its shabby air as the afternoon light grew dimmer, and by six o"clock, when Crane"s motor drew up before the door, it presented nothing but a dignified and s.p.a.cious ma.s.s to his admiring eyes.
No one but Tucker was with him. He had had some difficulty in avoiding the pressing desire of the two Falkener ladies to be with him at the start and help him, as they put it, "get everything in order." He had displayed, however, a firmness that they had not expected. He had been more embarra.s.sed than he cared to remember by Mrs. Falkener"s a.s.sistance in the real estate office, and he decided to begin his new housekeeping without her advice. He would, indeed, have dispensed with the companionship even of Tucker for a day or two, but that would have been impossible without a direct refusal, and Burton was unwilling to hurt the feelings of so true and loyal a friend, not only of his own but of his father before him.
The dignified butler and the irrepressible boy, Brindlebury, ran down the steps to meet them, and certainly they had no reason to complain of their treatment; bags were carried up and unstrapped, baths drawn, clothes laid out with the most praiseworthy promptness.
Tucker had advocated a preliminary tour of inspection.
"It is most important," he murmured to Crane, "to give these people the idea from the start that you cannot be deceived or imposed upon." But Crane refused even to consider such questions until he had had a bath and dinner.
The plan of the old house was very simple. On the right of the front door was the drawing-room, on the left a small library and a room which had evidently been used as an office. The stairs went up in the center, shallow and broad, winding about a square well. The dining-room ran across the back of the house.
When Tucker came down dressed for dinner, he found Crane was ahead of him. He was standing in the drawing-room bending so intently over something on a table that Tucker, who was not entirely without curiosity, came and bent over it, too, and even the butler, who had come to announce dinner, craned his neck in that direction.
It was a miniature, set in an old-fashioned frame of gold and pearls. It represented a young woman in a mauve tulle ball dress, full in the skirt and cut off the shoulders, as was the fashion in the days before the war. She wore a wreath of fuchsias, one of which trailing down just touched her bare shoulder.
"Well," said Tucker contemptuously, "you don"t consider that a work of art, do you?"