on their continuous travels, the servant invariably stood between that sensitive diffidence and the world.  Leek saw every one who had to be seen, and did everything that involved personal contacts.  And, being a bad habit, he had, of course, grown on Priam Farll, and thus, year after year, for a quarter of a century, Farll’s shyness, with his riches and his glory, had increased.  Happily Leek was never ill.  That is to say, he never had been ill, until this day of their sudden incognito arrival in London for a brief sojourn.  He could hardly have chosen a more inconvenient moment; for in London of all places, in that inherited house in Selwood Terrace which he so seldom used, Priam Farll could not carry on daily life without him.  It really was unpleasant and disturbing in the highest degree, this illness of Leek’s.  The fellow had apparently caught cold on the night-boat.  He had fought the approaches of insidious disease for several hours, going forth to make purchases and incidentally consulting a doctor; and then, without warning, in the very act of making up Farll’s couch, he had abandoned the struggle, and, since his own bed was not ready, he had taken to his master’s.  He always did the natural thing naturally.  And Farll had been forced to help him to undress!

From this point onwards Priam Farll, opulent though he was and illustrious, had sunk to a tragic impotence.  He could do nothing for himself; and he could do nothing for Leek, because Leek refused both brandy and sandwiches, and the larder consisted solely of brandy and sandwiches.  The man lay upstairs there, comatose, still, silent, waiting for the doctor who had promised to pay an evening visit.  And the summer day had darkened into the summer night.

The notion of issuing out into the world and personally obtaining food for himself or aid for Leek, did genuinely seem to Priam Farll an impossible notion; he had never done such things.  For him a shop was an impregnable fort garrisoned by ogres.  Besides, it would have been necessary to ‘ask,’ and ‘asking’ was the torture of tortures.  So he had wandered, solicitous and helpless, up and down the stairs, until at length Leek, ceasing to be a valet and deteriorating into a mere human organism, had feebly yet curtly requested to be just let alone, asserting that he was right enough.  Whereupon the envied of all painters, the symbol of artistic glory and triumph, had assumed the valet’s notorious puce dressing-gown and established himself in a hard chair for a night of discomfort.

The bell rang once more, and there was a sharp impressive knock that reverberated through the forlorn house in a most portentous and terrifying manner.  It might have been death knocking.  It engendered the horrible suspicion, “Suppose he’s seriously ill?” Priam Farll sprang up nervously, braced to meet ringers and knockers.

Cure for Shyness