Mrs. Bantam was intensely superior. From what far heights of luxury and distinction she had descended to the obscure kitchen of Island Lodge could be dimly apprehended from her dignity and her vocabulary and an occasional allusive passage in her conversation. She was as the transmigrant soul of some domestic pig, faintly aware of a nobler status in some previous existence. Where or what that existence had been John had never discovered; only he knew that it was noble, and that it had ended abruptly many years ago with the inconsiderate decease of “my hubby.”
Mrs. Bantam, for all her dignity, was scraggy, and had the aspect of chronic indigestion and decay. She was draped forever in funereal black, partly in memory of hubby, partly, no doubt, because black was “superior.” She walked, or rather proceeded, with an elegant stoop, her head stuck forward like an investigating hen, her long arms hanging straight down in front of her from her stooping shoulders like plumb-lines, suspended from a leaning tower. Her face was pinched and marvellously pale, and her black eyes retreated into unfathomable recesses. Her chin receded and ended suddenly in a kind of fold, from which a flabby isthmus of skin went straight to the base of her throat, like the neck of a fowl; in this precarious envelope an Adam’s apple of operatic dimensions moved up and down with alarming velocity.
Like so many of the world’s greatest personalities, she had a noble soul, but she would make speeches. Her intercourse with others was one long oration. And she was too urbane. When she laid the bacon before her gentleman of the moment as he gazed moodily at his morning paper, she would ask pardon in a shrill chirp, like the notes of a superannuated yodeller, for “passing in front” of him. This used to drive John as near to distraction as a Civil Servant can safely go. And though she had watched over him for six months, she still reminded him at every meal that she was as yet, of course, ill-acquainted with his tastes, and therefore unable to cater for those peculiar whims and fancies in which he differed from the last gentleman. By keeping sedulously alive this glorious myth she was able to disdain all responsibility for her choice and treatment of his food.
She served supper now with an injured air, and John knew that she must be allowed to talk during the whole meal instead of only during the fish. She always talked during the fish. It was her ration. For she was lonely, poor thing, brooding all day in her basement. But when she was offended, or hurt, or merely annoyed, it was John’s policy to allow her to exceed her ration.
So now she stood in the dark corner by the door, clutching an elbow feverishly in each hand, as if she feared that at any moment her forearms might fly away and be no more seen, and began:
“Sack, indeed! What next, I wonder? And I’m shore I hope you’ll like the fillet of plaice, Mr. Egerton, though reely I don’t know what your tastes are. We all have our likes and dislikes as they say, and it takes time learning gentlemen’s little ways. But as for seeing a sack in this house—well, I’m shore I don’t know when you had it, Mr. Egerton. A pore young thing that maid they have, so mean and scraggy-looking—a proper misery, I call her. And Mrs. Byrne in that condition, too; one would think they wanted a good strong gairl to help about the house. The doctor was sent for this afternoon, Mr. Egerton, and I don’t wonder it came so soon, what with the worry about that other hussy going off like that—would you like the Worcester, Mr. Egerton? You must tell me, you know, if there is anything. I know the last gentleman would have mushroom catchup, or ketchop as they call it—nothing would satisfy him but mushroom catchup, and for those as like their insides messed up with toadstools and dandelions I’m shore it’s very tasty, but, as I was saying, that Emily was a bad one and there’s no mistake, gadding off like that with a young man and not her night out, and then the sauce of her people coming round and bothering Mrs. Byrne about her—the idea. Cook tells me Mr. Byrne told them straight out about her goings on with young men all the time she’s been here, in and out, in and out night after night—and—”
John woke up with a start.
“What’s that you say, Mrs. Bantam? Mr. Byrne—Mr. Byrne did what?”
“I was just saying, sir, how Mr. Byrne told Emily’s people what he thought of her when they come worrying round the other day, so Cook was telling me. A proper hussy she must have been and no mistake—not Cook I mean, but that young Emily, gadding out night after night, young men and followers and the good Lord knows what all. Are you ready for your cutlet now, sir, and all that plaice left in the dish? Well, I never did, if you aren’t a poor eater, Mr. Egerton—and there’s no doubt she was out with one of them one night and went further than she meant, no doubt, but if you make your bed you must lie on it, though I’ve no doubt she’s sorry now. …”
Mrs. Bantam passed out into the kitchen, her voice trailing distantly away like the voices of the Pilgrims in Tannhäuser.
John sat silent, pondering darkly her disclosures. It was a fortnight now since the fatal
