Part 15 (1/2)

She was quite the reverse of beautiful--to some she was positively unpleasant to look upon; but that made no difference to Mrs.

Thaddeus Perkins, who, after long experience with domestics, had come to judge of the value of a servant by her performance rather than by her appearance. The girl--if girl she were, for she might have been thirty or sixty, so far as any one could judge from a merely superficial glance at her face and figure--was neat of aspect, and, what was more, she had come well recommended. She bore upon her face every evidence of respectability and character, as well as one or two lines which might have indicated years or toothache--it was difficult to decide which. On certain days, when the weather was very warm and she had much to do, the impression was that the lines meant years, and many of them, accentuated as they were by her pallor, the whiteness of her face making the lines seem almost black in their intensity. When she smiled, however, which she rarely did--she was solemn enough to have been a butler--one was impressed with the idea of hours of pain from a wicked tooth. At any rate, she was engaged as waitress, and put in charge of the first floor of the Perkins household.

”I fancy we've at last got a real treasure,” said Mrs. Perkins.

”There's no nonsense about Jane--I think.” The last two words were added apologetically.

”Where did you get her?” asked Thaddeus. ”At an Imbecility Office?”

”I don't quite know what you mean--an Imbecility Office?”

”Only my pet, private, and particular name for it, my dear. You would speak of it as an Intelligence Office, no doubt,” was the reply. ”My observation of the fruit of Intelligence Offices has convinced me that they deal in Imbecility.”

”Not quite,” laughed Mrs. Perkins. ”They look after Domestic Vacancies.”

”Well, they do it with a vengeance,” said Perkins. ”We've had more vacancies in this house to do our cooking and our laundering and our house-work generally than two able-bodied men could shake sticks at.

It seems to me that the domestic servant of to-day is fonder of preoccupation than of occupation.”

”Jane, I think, is different from the general run,” said Mrs.

Perkins. ”As I said, she has no nonsense about her.”

”Is she--an--an ornament to the scene--pretty, and all that?” asked Perkins.

”Quite the reverse,” replied the little house-keeper. ”She is as plain as a--as a--”

”Say hedge-fence and be done with it,” said Perkins. ”I'm glad of it. What's the use of providing a good dinner for your friends if they are going to spend all their time looking at the waitress?

When I give a dinner it makes me tired to have the men afterwards speak of the waitress rather than of the puree or the birds. If any domestic is to dominate the repast at all it should be the cook.”

”Service counts for a great deal, though, Ted,” suggested Mrs.

Perkins.

”True,” replied Thaddeus; ”but on the whole, when I am starving, give me a filet bearnaise served by a sailor, rather than an empty plate brought in in style by a butler of ill.u.s.trious lineage and impressive manner.” Then he added: ”I hope she isn't too homely, Bess--not a 'clock-stopper,' as the saying is. You don't want people's appet.i.tes taken away when you've worked for hours on a menu calculated to tickle the palates of your guests. Would her homeliness--ah--efface itself, for instance, in the presence of a culinary creation, or is it likely to overshadow everything with its ineffaceable completeness?”

”I think she'll do,” returned Mrs. Perkins; ”especially with your friends, who, it seems to me, would one and all insist upon finis.h.i.+ng a 'creation,' as you call it, even if lightning should strike the house.”

”From that point of view,” said he, ”I'm confident that Jane will do.”

So Jane came, and for a year, strange to relate, was all that her references claimed for her. She was neat, clean, and capable. She was sober and industrious. The wine had never been better served; the dinner had rarely come to the table so hot. Had she been a butler of the first magnitude she could not so have discouraged the idea of acquaintance; her attraction, if anything, was a combination of her self-effacement and her ugliness. The latter might have been noticed as she entered the dining-room; it was soon forgotten in the unconsciously observed ease with which she went through her work.

”She's fine,” said Perkins, after a dinner of twelve covers served by Jane with a pantry a.s.sistant. ”I've always had a sneaking notion that nothing short of a butler could satisfy me, but now I think otherwise. Jane is perfection, and there is nothing paralyzing about her, as there is about most of those reduced swells who wait on tables nowadays.”

In August the family departed for the mountains, and the house was left in charge of Jane and the cook, and right faithfully did they fulfil the requirements of their stewards.h.i.+p. The return in September found the house cleaned from top to bottom. The hardwood floors and stairs shone as they had rarely shone before, and as only an unlimited application of what is vulgarly termed ”elbow-grease”

could make them s.h.i.+ne. The linen was immaculate. Ireland is not freer from snakes than was the house of Perkins from cobwebs, and no speck of dust except those on the travellers was visible. It was evident that even in the absence of the family Jane was true to her ideals, and the heart of Mrs. Perkins was glad. Furthermore, Jane had acquired a full third set of teeth, which seemed to take some of the lines from her face, and, as Perkins observed, added materially to the general effect of the surroundings, although they were distressingly new. But, alas! they marked the beginning of the end.

Jane ceased to wait upon the table with that solemnity which is essential to the manner of a ”treasure”; she smiled occasionally, and where hitherto she had treated the conversation at the table with stolid indifference, a witticism would invariably now bring the new teeth unto view.

”Alas!” cried Thaddeus, ”our butleress has evoluted backwards. She grins like an ordinary waitress.”

It was too true. The possession of brilliantly white teeth seemed to have brought with it a desire to show them, which was destructive of that dignity with which Jane had previously been hedged about, and subst.i.tuted for it a less desirable atmosphere of possible familiarity, which might grow upon very slight provocation into intimacy, not to mention a nearer approach to social equality.