On arriving in London, George had the good fortune to sublet a flat in Ebury Street. The young military gentleman who condescended to let him have the place possessed one of those resounding double-jointed names that one comes across so often among the members of the upper or would-beupper branches of English society. George was never able to get all the mouth-filling syllables of that grand name quite straight, but suffice it to say that his landlord was a Major Somebody Somebody Somebody Bixley–Dunton.

He was a good-looking man, tall, young, ruddy, with the lean and well-conditioned figure of a cavalryman. He was an engaging kind of fellow, too — so engaging that when he made the arrangements which permitted George to take over the premises, he managed to insinuate into his bill for rent a thumping sum that covered all the electricity and gas he had used in the preceding two quarters. And electricity and gas, as George was to discover, came high in London. You read and worked by one, sometimes not only through the night, but also through the pea-soup opacity of a so-called day. And you bathed and shaved and cooked and feebly warmed yourself by the other. George never did figure out just exactly how the engaging Major Bixley–Dunton did it, but he managed it so adroitly that George was half-way back to America some six months later before it dawned on his unsuspecting mind that he had occupied the modest dwelling only two quarters but had paid four whacking assessments for the whole year’s gas and electricity.

George thought he was getting a bargain at the time, and perhaps he was. He paid Major Bixley–Dunton in quarterly instalments — in advance, of course — at the rate of two pounds ten shillings a week, and for this sum he had the advantage of being the sole occupant, at night at least, of a very small but distinctly authentic London house. It was really a rather tiny house, and certainly a very inconspicuous one, in a section noted for the fashionable spaciousness and magnificence of its dwellings. The building was three storeys tall, and George had the top floor. Below him a doctor had his offices, and the ground floor was occupied by a small tailor shop. These other tenants both lived elsewhere and were present only during the day, so at night George had the whole house to himself.

He had a good deal of respect for the little tailor shop. The venerable and celebrated Irish writer, Mr. James Burke, had his pants pressed there, and George had the honour of being present in the shop one night when the great man called for them. It was a considerable moment in Webber’s life. He felt that he was assisting at an impressive and distinguished ceremony. It was the first time he had ever been in such intimate contact with such exalted literary greatness, and most fairminded people will agree that there are few things in the world more intimate than a pair of pants. Also, even at the moment that Mr. Burke entered the shop and demanded his trousers, George was requesting the return of his own. This homely coincidence gave him a feeling of perfectly delightful understanding and identity of purpose with a gentleman whose talents had for so many years been an object of his veneration. It gave him an easy and casual sense of belonging to the inner circle, and he could imagine someone saying to him:

“Oh, by the way, have you seen anything of James Burke lately?”

“Oh yes,” he could nonchalantly reply, “I ran into him the other day in the place where we both go to have our pants pressed.”

And night after night as he worked in his sitting-room on the third floor, at that hour the solitary lord and master of that little house, toiling on the composition of a work which he hoped, but did not dare believe, might rival in celebrity some of James Burke’s own, he would get at times the most curious and moving sense of companionship, as if a beneficent and approving spirit were there beneath that roof with him; and through the watches of the night it would speak to him with the eloquence of silence, saying:

“Toil on, son, and do not lose heart or hope. Let nothing you dismay. You are not utterly forsaken. I, too, am here — here in the darkness waiting, here attentive, here approving of your labour and your dream.”

Ever sincerely yours,

James Burke’s Pants

One of the most memorable experiences of George Webber’s six months in London was his relationship with Daisy Purvis.

Mrs. Purvis was a charwoman who lived at Hammersmith and for years had worked for “unmarried gentlemen” in the fashionable districts known as Mayfair and Belgravia. George had inherited her, so to speak, from Major Bixley–Dunton, and when he went away he gave her back to him, to be passed on to the next young bachelor gentleman — a man, George hoped, who would be worthy of her loyalty, devotion, idolatry, and humble slavery. He had never had a servant in his life before. He had known Negro servants during his boyhood in the South; since then he had had people come in once or twice a week to clean up the various places where he had lived; but never before had he owned a servant body and soul, to the degree that her interests became his interests and her life his life; never before had he had anyone whose whole concern was the preservation of his comfort and welfare.

In appearance, Mrs. Purvis might have been the prototype of a whole class. She was not one of those comic figures so often pictured in the drawings of Belcher and Phil May, those pudgy old women who wear shawls and little Queen Victoria bonnets perched upon their heads, whose most appropriate locale seems to be the pub, and whom one actually does see in London pubs, sodden with beer and viciousness. Mrs. Purvis was a self-respecting female of the working class. She was somewhere in her forties, a woman inclined to plumpness, of middling height, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and pink-complexioned, with a pleasant, modest face, and a naturally friendly nature, but inclined to be somewhat do her dignity with strangers. At first, although she was at all times courteous, her manner towards her new employer was a little distant. She would come in in the morning and they would formally discuss the business of the day — what they were going to have for lunch, the supplies they were going to “git in”, the amount of money it would be necessary to “lay out”.

“What would you like for lunch today, sir?” Mrs. Purvis would say. “‘Ave you decided?”

“No, Mrs. Purvis. What would you suggest? Let’s see. We had the chump chop yesterday, didn’t we, and the sprouts?”

“Yes, sir,” Mrs. Purvis would reply, “and the day before — Monday, you may recall — we ‘ad rump steak with potato chips.”

“Yes, and it was good, too. Well, then, suppose we have rump steak again?”

“Very good, sir,” Mrs. Purvis would say, with perfect courtesy, but with a rising intonation of the voice which somehow suggested, delicately and yet unmistakably, that he could do as he pleased, but mat she rather thought his choice was not the best.

Feeling this, George would immediately have doubts. He would say:

“Oh, wait a minute. We’ve been having steak quite often, haven’t we?”

“You ‘ave ‘ad it quite a bit, sir,” she would say quietly, not with reproof, but with just a trace of confirmation. “Still, of course ——” She would not finish, but would pause and wait.

“Well, rump steak is good. All that we’ve had was first-rate. Still, maybe we could have something else today, for a change. What do you think?”

“Should think so, sir, if you feel that way,” she said quietly. “After all, one does like a bit of variety now and then, doesn’t one?”

“Of course. Well, then, what shall it be? What would you suggest, Mrs. Purvis?”

“Well, sir, if I may say so, a bit of gammon and peas is rather nice sometimes,” with just a trace of shyness and diffidence, mixed with an engaging tinge of warmth as she relented into the informality of mild enthusiasm. “I ‘ad a look in at the butcher’s as I came by this mornin’, and the gammon was nice, sir. It was a prime bit, sir,” she said now with genuine warmth. “Prime.”

After this, of course, he could not tell her that he had not the faintest notion what gammon was. He could only look delighted and respond:

“Then, by all means, let’s have gammon and peas. I think it’s just the thing today.”

“Very good, sir.” She had drawn herself up again; the formal intonation of the words had put her back within the fortress of aloofness, and had put him back upon his heels.

It was a curious and disquieting experience, one that he was often to have with English people. Just when he thought that finally the bars were down and the last barriers of reserve broken through, just when they had begun to talk with mutual warmth and enthusiasm, these English would be back behind the barricade, leaving him to feel that it was all to do over again.

“Now for your breakfast tomorrow mornin’,” Mrs. Purvis would continue. “‘Ave you decided what you’d like?”

“No, Mrs. Purvis. Have we anything on hand? How are our supplies holding out?”

“They are a bit low, sir,” she admitted. “We ‘ave eggs. There is still butter left, and ‘arf a loaf of bread. We’re gittin’ low on tea, sir. But you could ‘ave eggs, sir, if you like.”

Something in the faint formality of the tone informed him that even though he might like to have eggs, Mrs. Purvis would not approve, so he said quickly:

“Oh, no, Mrs. Purvis. Get the tea, of course, but no more eggs. I think we’ve had too many eggs, don’t you?”

“You ’ave, sir, you know,” she said gently —“for the last three mornin’s, at any rate. Still —” Again she paused, as if to say that if he was determined to go on having eggs, he should have them.

“Oh, no. We mustn’t have eggs again. If we keep on at this rate, we’ll get to the point where we can’t look an egg in the face again, won’t we?”

She laughed suddenly, a jolly and full-throated laugh. “We will, sir, won’t we?” said Mrs. Purvis, and laughed again. “Excuse me for larfin’, sir, but the way you put it, I ‘ad to larf. It was quite amusin’, really.”

“Well, then, Mrs. Purvis, maybe you’ve got some ideas. It’s not going to be eggs, that’s one thing sure.”

“Well, sir, ‘ave you tried kippers yet? Kippers are quite nice, sir,” she went on, with another momentary mellowing into warmth. “If you’re lookin’ for a change, you could do worse than kippers. Really you could, sir.”

“Well, then, we’ll have kippers. They’re the very thing.”

“Very good, sir,” She hesitated a moment and then said: “About your supper, sir — I was thinkin’——”

“Yes, Mrs. Purvis?”

“It just occurred to me, sir, that, seein’ as I’m not here at night to cook you a ‘ot meal, we might lay in somethin’ you could prepare for yourself. I was thinkin’ the other day, sir, workin’ as you do, you must get ‘ungry in the middle of the night, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea, would it, sir, if you could have somethin’ on ‘and?”

“I think it would be a wonderful idea, Mrs. Purvis. What do you have in mind?”

“Well, sir,” she paused briefly again, reflecting quietly, “we might git in a bit of tongue, you know. A bit of cold tongue is very tasty. I should think you’d find it most welcome in the middle of the night. Or a bit of ‘am. Then, sir, you would ‘ave your bread and butter and your mustard pickle, and I could even git in a jar of chutney, if youlike, and you know ‘ow to make tea yourself, don’t you, sir?”

“Of course. It’s a good idea. By all means, get in tongue or ham and chutney. Is that all, now?”

“Well, sir,” she reflected a moment longer, went to the buffet sideboard, opened it, and looked in. “I was just wonderin’ ‘ow you are for beer, sir . . . Ah-h,” she exclaimed, nodding with satisfaction, “it is gittin’ a bit low, sir. You ‘ave only two bottles left. Shall we lay in a ‘arf-dozen bottles?”

“Yes. No — wait a minute. Better make it a dozen, then you won’t have to be running out to order it again so soon.”

“Very good, sir.” Again the formal rising intonation, this time, he thought, with approval. “And what do you prefer, the Worthington or Bass?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Which is better?”

“They’re both first-rate, sir. Some people prefer one kind and some another. The Worthington, perhaps is a trifle lighter, but you won’t go wrong, sir, whichever one you order.”

“All right, then, I’ll tell you what you do — suppose you order half a dozen of each.”

“Very good, sir.” She turned to go.

“Thank you, Mrs. Purvis.”

“‘Kew,” she said, most formally and distantly now, and went out quietly, closing the door gently but very firmly after her.

As the weeks went by, her excessive formality towards George began to thaw out and drop away. She became more and more free in communicating to him whatever was on her mind. Not that she ever forgot her “place”. Quite the contrary. But, while always maintaining the instinctive manner of an English servant towards her master, she also became increasingly assiduous to her slavish attentions, until at last one would almost have thought that her duty towards him was her very life.

Her devotion, however, was not quite as whole and absolute as it appeared to be. For three or four hours of the day she had another master, who shared with George her service and her expense. This was the extraordinary little man who kept doctor’s offices on the floor below. In truth, therefore, Mrs. Purvis had a divided loyalty, and yet, in a curious way, she also managed to convey to each of her employers a sense that her whole-souled obligation belonged to him, and to him alone.

The little doctor was a Russian of the old regime, who had been a physician at the court of the Czar, and had accumulated a large fortune, which of course had been confiscated when he fled the country during the revolution. Penniless, he had come to England, and had made another fortune by a practice about which Mrs. Purvis, with a kind of haughty aloofness mixed with loyalty, had invented a soothing little fiction, but concerning which the doctor himself became in time quite candid. From one o’clock in the afternoon until four or thereabouts, the door-bell tinkled almost constantly, and Mrs. Purvis was kept busy padding up and down the narrow stairs, admitting or ushering out an incessant stream of patients.

George had not been long in the place before he made a surprising discovery concerning this thriving practice. He and the little doctor had the same telephone, by a plug-in arrangement which permitted each to use the instrument in his own quarters while sharing the same number and the same bill. Sometimes the telephone would ring at night, after the doctor had departed for his home in Surrey, and George observed that the callers were always women. They would demand the doctor in voices that varied from accents of desperate entreaty to tones that fairly crooned with voluptuous and sensual complaint. Where was the doctor? When George informed them that he was at his home, some twenty miles away, they would moan that it couldn’t be true, that it wasn’t possible, that fate could assuredly not play them so cruel a joke. When told that it was indeed so, they would then sometimes suggest that perhaps George himself could render them some assistance on his own account. To these requests he was forced to reply, often with reluctance, that he was not a physician, and that they would have to seek help in some other quarter.

These calls sharpened his curiosity, and he began to keep his eye peeled during the doctor’s office hours in the afternoon. He would go to the window and look out each time the door-bell rang, and in a little while he became convinced of what he had already begun to suspect, “that the doctor’s practice was devoted exclusively to women”. Their ages ranged from young womanhood to elderly haghood, they were of all kinds and conditions, but the one thing that was true of these patients was that they all wore skirts. No man ever rang that door-bell.

George would sometimes tease Mrs. Purvis about this unending procession of female visitors, and would openly speculate on the nature of the doctor’s practice. She had a capacity for self-deception which one often encounters among people of her class, although the phenomenon is by no means confined to it. No doubt she guessed some of the things that went on below stairs, but her loyalty to anyone she served was so unquestioning that when Geprge pressed her for information her manner would instantly become vague, and she would confess that, although she was not familiar with the technical details of the doctor’s practice, it was, she believed, devoted to “the treatment of nervous diseases”.

“Yes, but what kind of nervous diseases?” George would ask. “Don’t the gentlemen ever get nervous, too?”

“Ah-h,” said Mrs. Purvis, nodding her head with an air of knowing profundity that was very characteristic of her. “Ah-h, there you ‘ave it!”

“Have what, Mrs. Purvis?”

“‘Ave the hanswer,” she said. “It’s this Moddun Tempo. That’s what Doctor says,” she went on loftily, in that tone of unimpeachable authority with which she always referred to him and quoted his opinions. “It’s the pace of Moddun Life — cocktail parties, stayin’ up to all hours, and all of that. In America, I believe, conditions are even worse,” said Mrs. Purvis. “Not, of course, that they really are,” she added quickly, as if fearing that her remark might inadvertently have wounded the patriotic sensibilities of her employer. “I mean, after all, not ‘avin’ been there myself, I wouldn’t know, would I?”

Her picture of America, derived largely from the pages of the tabloid newspapers, of which she was a devoted reader, was so delightfully fantastic that George could never find it in his heart to disillusion her. So he dutifully agreed that she was right, and even managed, with a few skilful suggestions, to confirm her belief that almost all American women spent their time going from one cocktail party to another — in fact, practically never got to bed.

“Ah, then,” said Mrs. Purvis, nodding her head wisely with an air of satisfaction, “then you know what this Moddun Tempo means!” And, after a just perceptible pause: “Shockin’ I calls it!”

She called a great many things shocking. In fact, no choleric Tory in London’s most exclusive club could have been more vehemently and indignantly concerned with the state of the nation than was Daisy Purvis. To listen to her talk one might have thought she was the heir to enormous estates that had been chief treasures of her country’s history since the days of the Norman conquerors, but which were now being sold out of her hands, cut up piece-meal, ravaged and destroyed because she could no longer pay the ruinous taxes which the government had imposed. She would discuss these matters long and earnestly, with dire forebodings, windy sighs, and grave shakings of the head.

George would sometimes work the whole night through and finally get to bed at six or seven o’clock in the dismal fog of a London morning. Mrs. Purvis would arrive at seven-thirty. If he was not already asleep he would hear her creep softly up the stairs and go into the kitchen. A little later she would rap at his door and come in with an enormous cup, smoking with a beverage in whose soporific qualities she had the utmost faith.

“‘Ere’s a nice ‘ot cup of Ovaltine,” said Mrs. Purvis, “to git you off to sleep.”

He was probably nearly “off to sleep” already, but this made no difference. If he was not “off to sleep”, she had the Ovaltine to “git him off”. And if he was “off to sleep”, she woke him up and gave him the Ovaltine to “git him off” again.

The real truth of the matter was that she wanted to talk with him, to exchange gossip, and especially to go over the delectable proceedings of the day’s news. She would bring him fresh copies of The Times and the Daily Mail, and she would have, of course, her own tabloid paper. Then, while he propped himself up in bed and drank his Ovaltine, Mrs. Purvis would stand in the doorway, rattle her tabloid with a premonitory gesture, and thus begin:

“Shockin’, I calls it!”

“What’s shocking this morning, Mrs. Purvis?”

“Why, ’ere now, listen to this, if you please!” she would say indignantly, and read as follows: “‘It was announced yesterday, through the offices of the Messrs. Merigrew & Raspe, solicitors to ‘Is Grace, the Duke of Basingstoke, that ‘Is Grace ‘as announced for sale ‘is estate at Chipping Cudlington in Gloucestershire. The estate, comprisin’ sixteen thousand acres, of which eight thousand are in ‘untin’ preserve, and includin’ Basingstoke Hall, one of the finest examples of early Tudor architecture in the kingdom, ‘as been in the possession of ‘Is Grace’s family since the fifteenth century. Representatives of the Messrs. Merigrew & Raspe stated, ‘owever, that because of the enormous increase in the estate and income taxes since the war, ‘Is Grace feels that it is no longer possible for ’im to maintain the estate, and ‘e is accordingly puttin’ it up for sale. This means, of course, that the number of ‘Is Grace’s private estates ‘as now been reduced to three, Fothergill ‘All in Devonshire, Wintringham in Yawkshire, and the Castle of Loch McTash, ‘is ‘untin’ preserve in Scotland. ‘Is Grace, it is said, ‘as stated recently to friends that if somethin’ is not done to check the present ruinous trend towards ‘igher taxation, there will not be a single great estate in England remainin’ in the ‘ands of its original owners within a ‘undred years . . .

“Ah-h,” said Mrs. Purvis, nodding with an air of knowing confirmation as she finished reading this dolorous item. “There you ‘ave it! Just as ‘Is Grace says, we’re losin’ all our great estates. And what’s the reason? Why the owners can no longer afford to pay the taxes. Ruinous ‘e calls ’em, and ‘e’s, right. If it keeps up, you mark my words, the nobility’ll ‘ave no place left to live. A lot of ’em are migratin’ already,” she said darkly.

“Migrating where, Mrs. Purvis?”

“Why,” she said, “to France, to Italy, places on the Continent. There is Lord Cricklewood, livin’ somewhere in the south of France. And why? Because the taxes got too ‘igh for ’im. Let all ‘is places go ’ere. Ah-h, lovely places they were, too,” she said, with appetising tenderness. “And the Earl of Pentateuch, Lady Cynthia Wormwood, and ‘Er Ladyship, the Dowager Countess of Throttlemarsh — where are they all? They’ve all left, that’s where they are. Packed up and got out. Let their estates go. They’ve gone abroad to live. And why? Because the taxes are too ‘igh. Shockin’, I calls it!”

By this time Mrs. Purvis’s pleasant face would be pink with indignation. It was one of the most astonishing demonstrations of concern George had ever seen. Again and again he would try to get to the bottom of it. He would bang down his cup of Ovaltine and burst out:

“Yes, but good Lord, Mrs. Purvis, why should you worry so much about it. Those people aren’t going to starve. Here you get ten shillings a week from me and eight shillings more from the doctor. He says he’s retiring and going abroad to live at the end of this year. I’ll be going back to America pretty soon after that. You don’t even know where you’ll be or what you’ll be doing this time next year. Yet you come in here day after day and read me this stuff about the Duke of Basingstoke or the Earl of Pentateuch having to give up one of his half-dozen estates, as if you were afraid the whole lot of them would have to go on the dole. You’re the one who will have to go on the dole if you get out of work. Those people are not going to suffer, not really, not the way you’ll have to.”

“Ah-h yes,” she answered quietly, in a tone that was soft and gentle, as if she were speaking of the welfare of a group of helpless children, “but then, we’re used to it, aren’t we? And they, poor things, they’re not.”

It was appalling. He couldn’t fathom it. He just felt as if he’d come up smack against an impregnable wall. You could call it what you liked — servile snobbishness, blind ignorance, imbecilic stupidity — but there it was. You couldn’t shatter it, you couldn’t even shake it. It was the most formidable example of devotion and loyalty he had ever known.

These conversations would go on morning after morning until there was scarcely an impoverished young viscount whose grandeurs and miseries had not undergone the reverent investigation of Mrs. Purvis’s anguished and encyclopaedic care. But always at the end — after the whole huge hierarchy of saints, angels, captains of the host, guardians of the inner gate, and chief lieutenants of the right hand had been tenderly inspected down to the minutest multicoloured feather that blazed in their heraldic wings — silence would fall. It was as if some great and unseen presence had entered the room. Then Mrs. Purvis would rattle her crisp paper, clear her throat, and with holy quietness pronounce the sainted name of “‘E”.

Sometimes this moment would come as a sequel to her fascinated discussion of America and the Moddun Tempo, as, after enlarging for the hundredth time upon the shocking and unfortunate lot of the female population in the United States, she would add:

“I must say, though,” tactfully, after a brief pause, “that the American ladies are very smart, aren’t they, sir? They’re all so well-turned out. You can always tell one when you see one. And then they’re very clever, aren’t the............