No Name, Wilkie Collins [reading the story of the TXT] 📗

parlormaid, and now directed to the dogs⁠—as familiarly and as discontentedly as ever. Magdalen observed with some surprise that the companions of the admiral’s dinner had, thus far, received no scraps from their master’s plate. The two magnificent brutes sat squatted on their haunches, with their great heads over the table, watching the progress of the meal, with the profoundest attention, but apparently expecting no share in it. The roast meat was removed, the admiral’s plate was changed, and Magdalen took the silver covers off the two made-dishes on either side of the table. As she handed the first of the savory dishes to her master, the dogs suddenly exhibited a breathless personal interest in the proceedings. Brutus gluttonously watered at the mouth; and the tongue of Cassius, protruding in unutterable expectation, smoked again between his enormous jaws.

The admiral helped himself liberally from the dish; sent Magdalen to the side-table to get him some bread; and, when he thought her eye was off him, furtively tumbled the whole contents of his plate into Brutus’s mouth. Cassius whined faintly as his fortunate comrade swallowed the savory mess at a gulp. “Hush! you fool,” whispered the admiral. “Your turn next!”

Magdalen presented the second dish. Once more the old gentleman helped himself largely⁠—once more he sent her away to the side-table⁠—once more he tumbled the entire contents of the plate down the dog’s throat, selecting Cassius this time, as became a considerate master and an impartial man. When the next course followed⁠—consisting of a plain pudding and an unwholesome “cream”⁠—Magdalen’s suspicion of the function of the dogs at the dinner-table was confirmed. While the master took the simple pudding, the dogs swallowed the elaborate cream. The admiral was plainly afraid of offending his cook on the one hand, and of offending his digestion on the other⁠—and Brutus and Cassius were the two trained accomplices who regularly helped him every day off the horns of his dilemma. “Very good! very good!” said the old gentleman, with the most transparent duplicity. “Tell the cook, my dear, a capital cream!”

Having placed the wine and dessert on the table, Magdalen was about to withdraw. Before she could leave the room, her master called her back.

“Stop, stop!” said the admiral; “you don’t know the ways of the house yet, Lucy. Put another wineglass here, at my right hand⁠—the largest you can find, my dear. I’ve got a third dog, who comes in at dessert⁠—a drunken old sea-dog who has followed my fortunes, afloat and ashore, for fifty years and more. Yes, yes, that’s the sort of glass we want. You’re a good girl⁠—you’re a neat, handy girl. Steady, my dear! there’s nothing to be frightened at!”

A sudden thump on the outside of the door, followed by one mighty bark from each of the dogs, had made Magdalen start. “Come in!” shouted the admiral. The door opened; the tails of Brutus and Cassius cheerfully thumped the floor; and old Mazey marched straight up to the right-hand side of his master’s chair. The veteran stood there, with his legs wide apart and his balance carefully adjusted, as if the dining-room had been a cabin, and the house a ship pitching in a seaway.

The admiral filled the large glass with port, filled his own glass with claret, and raised it to his lips.

“God bless the Queen, Mazey,” said the admiral.

“God bless the Queen, your honor,” said old Mazey, swallowing his port, as the dogs swallowed the made-dishes, at a gulp.

“How’s the wind, Mazey?”

“West and by Noathe, your honor.”

“Any report tonight, Mazey?”

“No report, your honor.”

“Good evening, Mazey.”

“Good evening, your honor.”

The after-dinner ceremony thus completed, old Mazey made his bow, and walked out of the room again. Brutus and Cassius stretched themselves on the rug to digest mushrooms and made gravies in the lubricating heat of the fire. “For what we have received, the Lord make us truly thankful,” said the admiral. “Go downstairs, my good girl, and get your supper. A light meal, Lucy, if you take my advice⁠—a light meal, or you will have the nightmare. Early to bed, my dear, and early to rise, makes a parlormaid healthy and wealthy and wise. That’s the wisdom of your ancestors⁠—you mustn’t laugh at it. Good night.” In those words Magdalen was dismissed; and so her first day’s experience of Admiral Bartram came to an end.

After breakfast the next morning, the admiral’s directions to the new parlormaid included among them one particular order which, in Magdalen’s situation, it was especially her interest to receive. In the old gentleman’s absence from home that day, on local business which took him to Ossory, she was directed to make herself acquainted with the whole inhabited quarter of the house, and to learn the positions of the various rooms, so as to know where the bells called her when the bells rang. Mrs. Drake was charged with the duty of superintending the voyage of domestic discovery, unless she happened to be otherwise engaged⁠—in which case any one of the inferior servants would be equally competent to act as Magdalen’s guide.

At noon the admiral left for Ossory, and Magdalen presented herself in Mrs. Drake’s room, to be shown over the house. Mrs. Drake happened to be otherwise engaged, and referred her to the head housemaid. The head housemaid happened on that particular morning to be in the same condition as Mrs. Drake, and referred her to the under-housemaids. The under-housemaids declared they were all behindhand and had not a minute to spare⁠—they suggested, not too civilly, that old Mazey had nothing on earth to do, and that he knew the house as well, or better, than he knew his A.B.C. Magdalen took the hint, with a secret indignation and contempt which it cost her a hard struggle to conceal. She had suspected, on the previous night, and she was certain now, that the women-servants all incomprehensibly resented her presence among them with the same sullen unanimity of distrust. Mrs. Drake, as she had seen for herself, was really engaged that morning over her