ante-chamber to
entreat the groom of the stairs to implore John to ask the captain of
the buttons to desire the maid of the still-room to beg the housekeeper
to give out a few more lumps of sugar, as his Majesty has none for his
coffee, which probably is getting cold during the negotiation. In our
little Brentfords we are all kings, more or less. There are orders,
gradations, hierarchies, everywhere. In your house and mine there are
mysteries unknown to us. I am not going in to the horrid old question
of "followers." I don't mean cousins from the country, love-stricken
policemen, or gentlemen in mufti from Knightsbridge Barracks; but people
who have an occult right on the premises; the uncovenanted servants
of the house; gray women who are seen at evening with baskets flitting
about area-railings; dingy shawls which drop you furtive curtsies in
your neighborhood; demure little Jacks, who start up from behind boxes
in the pantry. Those outsiders wear Thomas's crest and livery, and call
him "Sir;" those silent women address the female servants as "Mum," and
curtsy before them, squaring their arms over their wretched lean aprons.
Then, again, those servi servorum have dependants in the vast, silent,
poverty-stricken world outside your comfortable kitchen fire, in the
world of darkness, and hunger, and miserable cold, and dank, flagged
cellars, and huddled straw, and rags, in which pale children are
swarming. It may be your beer (which runs with great volubility) has a
pipe or two which communicates with those dark caverns where hopeless
anguish pours the groan, and would scarce see light but for a scrap or
two of candle which has been whipped away from your worship's kitchen.
Not many years ago--I don't know whether before or since that white
mark was drawn on the door--a lady occupied the confidential place of
housemaid in this "private residence," who brought a good character,
who seemed to have a cheerful temper, whom I used to hear clattering and
bumping overhead or on the stairs long before daylight--there, I say,
was poor Camilla, scouring the plain, trundling and brushing, and
clattering with her pans and brooms, and humming at her work. Well,
she had established a smuggling communication of beer over the area
frontier. This neat-handed Phyllis used to pack up the nicest baskets
of my provender, and convey them to somebody outside--I believe, on my
conscience, to some poor friend in distress. Camilla was consigned to