Bates

“ Mr. Bates himself spent very little time in his wife's box. He lounged on one of the springy sofas in the narrow lobby behind, or leaned over the burnished barriers of other boxes to talk murmurously with other magnates about the Stock Exchange or the volume of traffic. He was a grave and somewhat inexpressive person, with reticent eyes and snow-white bunches of side-whiskers, and a rather cold and impassive manner. His wife followed his peregrinations with an indulgent eye.
"Poor Granger," she said to Jane; "this thing tires him more and more every year. So I give him plenty of leeway. ”

“ The under-laundress dried her eyes on one corner of her apron.
"I dunno about Felice," she said uncertainly. "Mebbe Mr. Bates—oh, here comes Mr. Bates now."
Round, red, highly perturbed, the Dalton butler bustled into the laundry and looked Wilkins up and down.
"Trunk for the master?" he asked crisply.
"For Felice, the young lady's maid, as I understand," Wilkins said quietly. "Where shall I find her? It's for herself."
His calm and superior smile warned Bates not to question an affair that could not possibly concern him—yet the warning missed Bates somehow. ”

“ Solemn silence ensued, as Bates said,
“Blood is going down to Darlington to-night, to arrest Jack, who is here. I have put the colonel off the right scent.”
“The devil!—to arrest me?” said Jack, with an oath.
“Silence! Jack,” growled several, with threatening looks. “Silence, and listen to Master Bates; he is our captain now—not you.”
“Well, and while Blood is away on this wild-goose chase, Jack has proposed to rob his house.”
“Capital idea,” said all.
“So think I,” said Bates; “so come, prepare yourselves. Put masks in your pockets, and bring a rope ladder with you.” ”

“ Spokesly felt like a little social diversion.
"Busy?" he enquired, thrusting his curiously ill-balanced features into the port and smiling. Mr. Bates's smile was unfortunate. Without being in any way insincere, it gave one the illusion that it was fitted on over his real face. A long, sharp nose projecting straight out from a receding brow nestled in a pomatumed and waxed moustache, and his eyes, of an opaque hazel, became the glinting centres of scores of tiny radiating lines. ”

“ One day I walked past Miss Bates's little sanctum Remingtorium, and saw in her place a black-haired unit—unmistakably a person—pounding with each of her forefingers upon the keys. Musing on the mutability of temporal affairs, I passed on. The next day I went on a two weeks' vacation. Returning, I strolled through the lobby of the Acropolis, and saw, with a little warm glow of auld lang syne, Miss Bates, as Grecian and kind and flawless as ever, just putting the cover on her machine. ”

“ Susan Bates answered him pantingly, all a-tremble with nervous excitement. "Mr. Bates is a just man, and not an ungenerous man, but—but"—She clasped her hands and leaned forward anxiously. "Mr. Bates and I have always stepped along together. He has always done whatever I have asked him to do. He has never disappointed me. But—oh, Roger, he never knew your father in those early days; if he had, could he stand by and see him on the edge of ruin without making some effort to save him?" She waved her hand over the disorder of Roger's desk. ”

“ A white-haired man, still lithe, erect and agile despite his years, opened the door for them as their steps sounded on the planking of the veranda. This was Bates, the butler, a faithful retainer who had served the father of Lucy Varr and her sister a full decade before passing with the house and land into the keeping of the younger daughter and her husband. ”

“ The world was full of sunshine, and, though the faces of the passers-by were anxious and unsmiling, there was no despondency about them. Where no despondency is, there surely is hope. Bates began to feel hopeful. The sight of a Territorial with a kitbag completed his recovery. He strode out with an unusual vigour, squared his poor chest, swung his arms, and whistled softly to himself the chorus of some piece of music-hall patriotism—
"They can't build boys of the bull-dog breed!" ”

“ But Bates, the enigma, Bates, the incomparable cook, the perfect servant, sat at a table, the light of several candles falling on a book over which he was bent with that maddening gravity he had never yet in my presence thrown off. ”

“ The flag was in his button-hole, his eye had a glint of lingering excitement, his brain was ruffled; he saw himself as he was. England must fight, Englishmen must help, for England could not fail. On her rested the truest and noblest concerns of humanity.
Bates removed his coat. He was five-foot two; his chest measurement was less than proportionate to his height. His muscles, so far as they existed, were flabby. He moved his arms to exercise their powers; then, realising his weariness, went slowly to bed. Bates was a little tiny man, but his heart was large. ”

“ Bates, the real hero of the affair at Glenarm.
He led us through the narrow stairway by which he had entered, which had been built between false walls, and we played ghost for one another, to show just how the tread of a human being around the chimney sounded. There was much to explain, and my grandfather’s contrition for having placed me in so hazardous a predicament was so sincere, and his wish to make amends so evident, that my heart warmed to him. He made me describe in detail all the incidents of my stay at the house, listening with boyish delight to my adventures. ”

“ Bates was a cynic. He despised all the customs and manners of the place most heartily and took the most curious care to observe them. He might have been the inventor and patentee of rocker, if one judged him by the fervour with which he played it. He entered his name for every possible event at the sports, and jumped the jumps and threw the hammer and ran the races as if his life depended on it. Once Mr. Horbury had accidentally over-head Bates saying something about "the honour of the House" which went to his heart. ”

“ Venner said. "Most of it is in this paper. It appears that the aforesaid Mr. Bates is a gentleman of retiring disposition, and somewhat eccentric habits. As far as one can gather, he has no friends, but lives quietly in Portsmouth Square, his wants being ministered to by a body of servants who have been in his employ for years. Of necessity, Mr. Bates is a man of wealth, or he could not possibly live in a house the rent of which cannot be less than five or six hundred a year. ”

“ Bates, hoping against hope for the return of the boat, endeavoured to gain time. “Shut down the skylight, then,” said he, with the ghost of an authority in his voice, “until I ask the lady.”
This, however, John Rex refused to do. “You can ask well enough where you are,” he said.
But there was no need for Mr. Bates to put a question. The door of the state-room opened, and Mrs. Vickers appeared, trembling, with Sylvia by her side. “Accept, Mr. Bates,” she said, “since it must be so. We should gain nothing by refusing. We are at their mercy—God help us!” ”

“ Bates dropped her voice. "Did you ever have a private secretary?"
"Me?" called Jane. "I'm my own."
"Keep it that way," said Mrs. Bates, impressively. "Don't ever change—no matter how many engagements and appointments and letters and dates you come to have. You'll never spend a happy day afterwards. Tutors are bad enough—but, thank goodness, my boys are past that age. And men servants are bad enough—every time I want to stir in my own house I seem to have a footman on each toe and a butler standing on my train; however, people in our position—well, Granger insists, you know. ”

“ Bates thinks of the hours of heaviness when, a poor huckster woman, she trudged wearily along with her loaded basket, and of the many times she sought the miserable cellar without a morsel of bread for her famishing children, and her heart clings fondly to the memory of the real friend who wrought so glorious a change in her condition. ”

“ Bates is really fond of you."
Dale gave a snort; and then after a long pause spoke with strong emphasis.
"I'll tell you, Mavis, what Mr. Bates is. He's a good man, every bit and crumb of him. There's no one between the downs and the sea that I feel the same respect for that I do for that old gentleman." ”

“ He was restless, and Bates seldom entered his cabin without finding him pacing the little square of deck. It was Tom’s wish that Bates should attend to the man; he was afraid to trust himself with him; and Will was young and green, and might by some well-meant whisper balk my sweetheart’s scheme to terrify the man into a confession of truth.
Once, when Bates went in with the prisoner’s dinner, Rotch, leaning against his bunk with his arms folded—so the mate described him—asked where they were sailing the brig to. ”

“ Bates led the way to a far corner where a long thin man, his frock coat falling away open from a heavily brocaded vest with onyx buttons, and his scarlet tarboosh on one side of his head, was lolling on the crimson plush cushions. In one hand he held the stem of an amber-mouthed narghileh. On the table was an empty coffee cup and a glass of mastic. Across his long thin thighs lay a Greek newspaper. ”

“ Bates' time. He was a thin middle-aged man, with light watery eyes, a straggling beard, and an astoundingly dilatory manner. He used to pull his pony and cart into the hedge or bank by the roadside, and leave them there an unconscionable time, while he pottered about the back doors of his customers, offering the articles that he had brought with him, or trying to obtain orders for other articles that he would bring next week; and although apparently so shy himself, no bruskness in others ever seemed to rebuff him. ”

“ Yale had returned, with a puzzled look.
“Then that particular bootblack should have been tempted to pick up a bomb,” replied Bates. “The hauteur of the poor is more abominable than that of the rich, for it is not even the real thing. It is veneered, gilded.” Then he had continued stripping the cigars and replacing them carefully in their box.
Now as Minnie stood concealed in the coat, in a measure relieved, because it was hardly rational that Bates would investigate the minister's closet, he entered the study still singing. ”

“ I then got inside the fireplace myself, that being the safest situation in case Bates should fire through the chinks,—though we did not believe he would do so,—and reaching as far as I could round the corner, I began scraping the floor of the cabin near the wall with the crackling bark, pausing every now and then to listen.
It was an anxious moment, for the success of our plan depended upon my being able to induce Bates to come close to the wall. Percy, I knew, was lying flat upon the roof, eagerly awaiting his opportunity; but where was Bates? That was the important question. ”

“ As we have before stated, it was a clear frosty night; not a single cloud obscured the myriad stars that glittered in the deep vault of heaven. And as Dick Bates wandered under the light of the stars along the long line of docks, no one would have believed that this anxious-faced man was the brutal drunkard that only on the previous night punished his unoffending children without mercy. ”

“ Bates, with a little gasp, "if I may have something outside, sir! I—I should hardly like to sit down with you, sir."
The Professor raised his eyebrows again. "Really, Mr. Bates, a little more self-respect, if you please. You must remember that you are a burglar now, not a valet."
"Yes, sir."
Mr. Bates seated himself in the second chair, and the Professor, whose appetite seemed suddenly to have vanished, helped him to about seven-eighths of the eggs and bacon. Mr. Bates fell upon them with as much ferocity as his professional refinement would permit. ”

“ Bates, furious with rage, so far forgot himself as to swear. “It's a mutiny, ma'am,” said he. “Go back to your cabin and lock the door. Those bloody villains have risen on us!” Julia Vickers felt her heart grow sick. Was she never to escape out of this dreadful life? “Go into your cabin, ma'am,” says Bates again, “and don't move a finger till I tell ye. Maybe it ain't so bad as it looks; I've got my pistols with me, thank God, and Mr. Frere'll hear the shot anyway. Mutiny? On deck there!” ”

“ Well, I knew, for I had heard talk of it at the time, that Dr Bates was one of them that gave up their livings when the Act of Uniformity came in, so that he was regarded as no better than a conventicler; and I wondered how father should like to be spoke to by Dr Bates any more than by Farmer Ingham, because to him they would both be laymen alike. But at that time I was learning to tarry the Lord’s leisure—ah! that’s a grand word, Phoebe! For His leisure runs side by side with our profit, and He’ll be at leisure to attend to you the minute that you really need attending to. ”

“ A carpenter of the name of Bates was called in, so distant a relative of Mrs Bowater's apparently that she never by nod, word, or look acknowledged the bond. Mr Bates held my landlady in almost speechless respect. "A woman in a thousand," he repeatedly assured me, when we were grown a little accustomed to one another; "a woman in ten thousand. And if things hadn't been what they was, you may understand, they might have turned out different. Ah, miss, there's one looking down on us could tell a tale." ”

“ The war had been carried openly into the house, but Bates,—just why should any one connected with the conspiracy injure Bates, who stood so near to Pickering, its leader? The fellow was undoubtedly hurt,—there was no mistaking the lump on his head. He spoke with a painful difficulty that was not assumed, I felt increasingly sure, as he went on.
“I saw a man pulling out the books and tapping the inside of the shelves. He was working very fast. And the next thing I knew he let in another man through one of the terrace doors,—the one there that still stands a little open.” ”