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‘Hell!’ said Ellis.
He went into the lounge. Verrall was reading the Field, and invisible except for Palm Beach
trouser-ends and two lustrous sooty-brown shoes. He did not trouble to stir at hearing someone else
come into the room. Ellis halted.
‘Here, you–what’s your name–Verrall!’
‘What?’
‘Have you been kicking our butler?’
Verrall’s sulky blue eye appeared round the corner of the Field, like the eye of a crustacean peering
round a rock.
‘What?’ he repeated shortly.
‘I said, have you been kicking our bloody butler?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then what the hell do you mean by it?’
‘Beggar gave me his lip. I sent him for a whisky and soda, and he brought it warm. I told him to put
ice in it, and he wouldn’t–talked some bloody rot about saving the last piece of ice. So I kicked his
bottom. Serve him right.’
Ellis turned quite grey. He was furious. The butler was a piece of Club property and not to be
kicked by strangers. But what most angered Ellis was the thought that Verrall quite possibly suspected
him of being sorry for the butler–in fact, of disapproving of kicking as such.
‘Serve him right? I dare say it bloody well did serve him right. But what in hell’s that got to do
with it? Who are you to come kicking our servants?’
‘Bosh, my good chap. Needed kicking. You’ve let your servants get out of hand here.’
‘You damned, insolent young tick, what’s it got to do with you if he needed kicking? You’re not
even a member of this Club. It’s our job to kick the servants not yours.’
Verrall lowered the Field and brought his other eye into play. His surly voice did not change its
tone. He never lost his temper with a European; it was never necessary.
‘My good chap, if anyone gives me lip I kick his bottom. Do you want me to kick yours?’
All the fire went out of Ellis suddenly. He was not afraid, he had never been afraid in his life; only,
Verrall’s eye was too much for him. That eye could make you feel as though you were under Niagara!
The oaths wilted on Ellis’s lips; his voice almost deserted him. He said querulously and even
plaintively:
‘But damn it, he was quite right not to give you the last bit of ice. Do you think we only buy ice for
you? We can only get the stuff twice a week in this place.’
‘Rotten bad management on your part, then,’ said Verrall, and retired behind the Field, content to
let the matter drop.
Ellis was helpless. The calm way in which Verrall went back to his paper, quite genuinely
forgetting Ellis’s existence, was maddening. Should he not give the young swab a good, rousing kick?
But somehow, the kick was never given. Verrall had earned many kicks in his life, but he had never
received one and probably never would. Ellis seeped helplessly back to the card-room, to work off
his feelings on the butler, leaving Verrall in possession of the lounge.