On the following morning Liddy and Mrs. Ralston, my own housekeeper,
had a difference of opinion, and Mrs. Ralston left on the eleven train.
Just after luncheon, Burke, the butler, was taken unexpectedly with a
pain in his right side, much worse when I was within hearing distance,
and by afternoon he was started cityward. That night the cook's sister
had a baby--the cook, seeing indecision in my face, made it twins on
second thought--and, to be short, by noon the next day the household
staff was down to Liddy and myself. And this in a house with
twenty-two rooms and five baths!
Liddy wanted to go back to the city at once, but the milk-boy said that
Thomas Johnson, the Armstrongs' colored butler, was working as a waiter
at the Greenwood Club, and might come back. I have the usual scruples
about coercing people's servants away, but few of us have any
conscience regarding institutions or corporations--witness the way we
beat railroads and street-car companies when we can--so I called up the
club, and about eight o'clock Thomas Johnson came to see me. Poor
Thomas!
Well, it ended by my engaging Thomas on the spot, at outrageous wages,
and with permission to sleep in the gardener's lodge, empty since the
house was rented. The old man--he was white-haired and a little
stooped, but with an immense idea of his personal dignity--gave me his
reasons hesitatingly.
"I ain't sayin' nothin', Mis' Innes," he said, with his hand on the
door-knob, "but there's been goin's-on here this las' few months as
ain't natchal. 'Tain't one thing an' 'tain't another--it's jest a door
squealin' here, an' a winder closin' there, but when doors an' winders
gets to cuttin' up capers and there's nobody nigh 'em, it's time Thomas
Johnson sleeps somewhar's else."
Liddy, who seemed to be never more than ten feet away from me that
night, and was afraid of her shadow in that great barn of a place,
screamed a little, and turned a yellow-green. But I am not easily
alarmed.
It was entirely in vain; I represented to Thomas that we were alone,
and that he would have to stay in the house that night. He was politely
firm, but he would come over early the next morning, and if I gave him
a key, he would come in time to get some sort of breakfast. I stood on
the huge veranda and watched him shuffle along down the shadowy drive,
with mingled feelings--irritation at his cowardice and thankfulness at
getting him at all. I am not ashamed to say that I double-locked the
hall door when I went in.