I have
seen him, towards the end of the meal, yawning. I remember another
whom, positively, I heard humming--a faint sound indeed, but menacing
as the roll of tumbrils.
These were exceptional cases, I grant. For the most part, the butlers
observed by me have had a manner as correctly smooth and colourless as
their very shirt-fronts. Aye, and in two or three of them, modern
though they were in date and aspect, I could have sworn there was `a
flame of old-world fealty all bright.' Were these but the finer
comedians? There was one (I will call him Brett) who had an almost
dog-like way of watching his master. Was this but a calculated touch
in a merely aesthetic whole? Brett was tall and slender, and his
movements were those of a greyhound under perfect self-control.
Baldness at the temples enhanced the solemnity of his thin smooth
face. It is more than twenty years since first I saw him; and for a
long period I saw him often, both in town and in country. Against the
background of either house he was impeccable. Many butlers might be
that. Brett's supremacy was in the sense he gave one that he was,
after all, human--that he had a heart, in which he had taken the
liberty to reserve a corner for any true friend of his master and
mistress. I remember well the first time he overstepped sheer
formality in relation to myself.
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