“No, my good man, we want to hear the truth, for we never heard you tell us anything but fibs before.”
“You are very funny, my lord, but you have hit it right. Yes, we told fibs, big lies even. But telling the truth never paid. This was the first commandment of the servants’ catechism. In our very first situation we became familiar with a system of deceit. Still, you know yourselves how particular you were about servants always speaking the truth! I often wondered how the upper classes would have behaved had they been in our places? I don’t think they would have done very differently under the circumstances. We have all the same perception of injustice, we all feel its sting, and as kicking against it does not help us, compromise is the only course left us. Do you not compromise more or less with your conscience, when your god, Society, sets out rules that are too stringent? We are all men, my lord, although the Duchess of Southdown thought the contrary. I heard her say one day that she would have preferred a man for a lady’s maid, as they were more punctual and less talkative; and as to the sex, that did not matter—‘a servant was not a man!’ You can’t think what a funny impression it makes on one to hear such things.”
“Then you do not believe, Temple, that masters ever could have inspired loyalty in their servants?” inquired Sinclair.
“I must ask you, sir, whether there ever existed true loyalty on the part of the master to his servants? I have rarely seen it. The distance between the classes was too great, and the gulf grew daily wider and deeper when you convinced yourselves that you were in every way different from ‘those kind of people.’ The worst of it was, that by dint of widening the gulf between us, we naturally became strangers to each other. Our personal griefs and joys you ignored; you did not want to be bothered with our worries. We were salaried to be outwardly devoted and sympathetic, to minister to your wants, rejoice in your successes, condole in your misfortunes, whilst our own hearts ached from private sorrows.”
“How you must have despised us!” said Lionel.
“What an accumulation of vindictiveness must have filled your hearts for those who used you so!” echoed Gwen.