He condensed the meaning of the proposed speech into a question.
"What did you do it for? What—the—devil did you do it for?"
"I am extremely sorry, Sir Godfrey, but I just felt I had to. It sort of came over me. It is difficult to explain myself."
"Difficult!"
"It was a kind of what I might describe as an impulse, sir. I was just coming from behind with the piece of ice in the tongs, thinking of nothing except to put it in the glass, when it suddenly crossed my mind that I'd been doing the same thing night in and night out for fifteen years, and it came over me what a long time it was and all. And then you leaned forward to drink the soup. And somehow I just couldn't resist it. I now regret it exceedingly."
Sir Godfrey gulped.
"You'll go to-morrow."
Jevons bowed.
"Shall I serve the fish, Sir Godfrey?"
He seemed to regard the incident as closed.
Dinner was resumed in silence. Sir Godfrey's mind was still in a whirl. All he realized clearly was that the end of the world had come. He had dismissed Jevons, and without Jevons life was impossible. But he was not going to alter his decision. By Gad, no! not if he had to spend the reset of his existence in beastly hotels being maddened to distraction by a set of blanked incompetents who were probably foreign spies. And that seemed to him at the moment his only course, for the idea of engaging a successor to the victim of impulse was too bizarre to be grappled with yet. At whatever cost to himself, Jevons must go. That was settled and done with.
"I mean it," he snapped, over his shoulder, as the other filled his liqueur-glass.
"Sir?"
"I say I mean it. What I said. You must go."
"Just so, Sir Godfrey."
He placed the cigars on the table. Sir Godfrey selected one, cracked the end of it, and placed it in the flame which his still faithful servant held for him. It was a magnificent cigar, and the first puff almost softened him to the extent of changing his mind. But dignity jerked at the reins.
"Of course I'll give you a character."
"Thank you, Sir Godfrey, but I do not feel as if I could take service with anybody but yourself. I have saved money. I shall retire."
"Please yourself."
"Just so, Sir Godfrey."
"Leave me your address."
"Sir?"
Sir Godfrey scowled. He was feeling nervous. More, there was a suggestion of a death-bed parting about this interview which he found strangely weakening. Fifteen years! As Jevons had said, it was a long time.
"Your address. You know perfectly well that I promised you a small—er—confound it!—the pension, man!"
"I had imagined that after what has occurred"
"Don't be a fool. That will be all. I am going to the club. I shall not want you any more to-night."
"Very good, sir."
He closed the door softly. Sir Godfrey sat on, chewing the end of his cigar.
A week later Sir Godfrey sat in his private sitting-room at the Hotel Guelph and kicked moodily at a foot-stool.
"This," he said to himself, "is perfectly infernal."
He got up and began to pace the room.
"If I stop any longer in this pot-house I shall go mad."
Of course he was doing the place an injustice. The Guelph is one of the three best hotels in London. The management pride themselves on making guests as comfortable as modern ingenuity will allow. There was every possible convenience in this suite to which Sir Godfrey had fled from an Albany which for him was now haunted.
And Sir Godfrey spoke of it as a pot-house. But then, the Hotel Guelph had one defect which outweighed all its merits. It could not supply him with a valet who had been with him for fifteen years. Losing Jevons was like losing a leg.
But he was not going to take him back. All his life he had been a victim to what his admirers called determination and his detractors pig-headedness, and he never reversed a decision.
"I'll get out of here to-day," he said to himself.
A thought struck him. "I'll go and spend a week or two with George."
He wondered why he had not thought of it before. He saw now where his initial mistake had laid: he had tried to carry on, without Jevons, the sort of life with which Jevons had been so closely associated. It was all very well to leave the Albany and move to the Guelph, but that was not enough. He was still in the groove in which he had been in the days before Jevons had left him.
