Van Bibber's man Walters was the envy and admiration of his friends.
He was English, of course, and he had been trained in the household of
the Marquis Bendinot, and had travelled, in his younger days, as the
valet of young Lord Upton. He was now rather well on in years,
although it would have been impossible to say just how old he was.
Walters had a dignified and repellent air about him, and he brushed his
hair in such a way as to conceal his baldness.
And when a smirking, slavish youth with red checks and awkward gestures
turned up in Van Bibber's livery, his friends were naturally surprised,
and asked how he had come to lose Walters. Van Bibber could not say
exactly, at least he could not rightly tell whether he had dismissed
Walters or Walters had dismissed himself. The facts of the unfortunate
separation were like this:
Van Bibber gave a great many dinners during the course of the season at
Delmonico's, dinners hardly formal enough to require a private room,
and yet too important to allow of his running the risk of keeping his
guests standing in the hall waiting for a vacant table. So he
conceived the idea of sending Walters over about half-past six to keep
a table for him. As everybody knows, you can hold a table yourself at
Delmonico's for any length of time until the other guests arrive, but
the rule is very strict about servants. Because, as the head waiter
will tell you, if servants were allowed to reserve a table during the
big rush at seven o'clock, why not messenger boys? And it would
certainly never do to have half a dozen large tables securely held by
minute messengers while the hungry and impatient waited their turn at
the door.
But Walters looked as much like a gentleman as did many of the diners;
and when he seated himself at the largest table and told the waiter to
serve for a party of eight or ten, he did it with such an air that the
head waiter came over himself and took the orders. Walters knew quite
as much about ordering a dinner as did his master; and when Van Bibber
was too tired to make out the menu, Walters would look over the card
himself and order the proper wines and side dishes; and with such a
carelessly severe air and in such a masterly manner did he discharge
this high function that the waiters looked upon him with much respect.
But respect even from your equals and the satisfaction of having your
fellow-servants mistake you for a member of the Few Hundred are not
enough. Walters wanted more. He wanted the further satisfaction of
enjoying the delicious dishes he had ordered; of sitting as a coequal
with the people for whom he had kept a place; of completing the
deception he practised only up to the point where it became most
interesting.
It certainly was trying to have to rise with a subservient and
unobtrusive bow and glide out unnoticed by the real guests when they
arrived; to have to relinquish the feast just when the feast should
begin. It would not be pleasant, certainly, to sit for an hour at a
big empty table, ordering dishes fit only for epicures, and then, just
as the waiters bore down with the Little Neck clams, so nicely iced and
so cool and bitter-looking, to have to rise and go out into the street
to a table d'hote around the corner.
This was Walters's state of mind when Mr. Van Bibber told him for the
hundredth time to keep a table for him for three at Delmonico's.
Walters wrapped his severe figure in a frock-coat and brushed his hair,
and allowed himself the dignity of a walking-stick. He would have
liked to act as a substitute in an evening dress-suit, but Van Bibber
would not have allowed it. So Walters walked over to Delmonico's and
took a table near a window, and said that the other gentlemen would
arrive later. Then he looked at his watch and ordered the dinner. It
was just the sort of dinner he would have ordered had he ordered it for
himself at some one else's expense. He suggested Little Neck clams
first, with Chablis, and pea-soup, and caviare on toast, before the
oyster crabs, with Johannisberger Cabinet; then an entree of calves'
brains and rice; then no roast, but a bird, cold asparagus with French
dressing, Camembert cheese, and Turkish coffee. As there were to be no
women, he omitted the sweets and added three other wines to follow the
white wine. It struck him as a particularly well-chosen dinner, and
the longer he sat and thought about it the more he wished he were to
test its excellence. And then the people all around him were so bright
and happy, and seemed to be enjoying what they had ordered with such a
refinement of zest that he felt he would give a great deal could he
just sit there as one of them for a brief hour.
At that moment the servant deferentially handed him a note which a
messenger boy had brought. It said:
"Dinner off called out town send clothes and things after me to Young's
Boston."
"VAN BIBBER."
Walters rose involuntarily, and then sat still to think about it. He
would have to countermand the dinner which he had ordered over half an
hour before, and he would have to explain who he was to those other
servants who had always regarded him as such a great gentleman. It was
very hard.
And then Walters was tempted. He was a very good servant, and he knew
his place as only an English servant can, and he had always accepted
it, but to-night he was tempted--and he fell. He met the waiter's
anxious look with a grave smile.
"The other gentlemen will not be with me to-night," he said, glancing
at the note. "But I will dine here as I intended. You can serve for
one."
That was perhaps the proudest night in the history of Walters. He had
always felt that he was born out of his proper sphere, and to-night he
was assured of it. He was a little nervous at first, lest some of Van
Bibber's friends should come in and recognize him; but as the dinner
progressed and the warm odor of the dishes touched his sense, and the
rich wines ran through his veins, and the women around him smiled and
bent and moved like beautiful birds of beautiful plumage, he became
content, grandly content; and he half closed his eyes and imagined he
was giving a dinner to everybody in the place. Vain and idle thoughts
came to him and went again, and he eyed the others about him calmly and
with polite courtesy, as they did him, and he felt that if he must
later pay for this moment it was worth the paying.
Then he gave the waiter a couple of dollars out of his own pocket and
wrote Van Bibber's name on the check, and walked in state into the
cafe, where he ordered a green mint and a heavy, black, and expensive
cigar, and seated himself at the window, where he felt that he should
always have sat if the fates had been just. The smoke hung in light
clouds about him, and the lights shone and glistened on the white
cloths and the broad shirt-fronts of the smart young men and
distinguished foreign-looking older men at the surrounding tables.
And then, in the midst of his dreamings, he heard the soft, careless
drawl of his master, which sounded at that time and in that place like
the awful voice of a condemning judge. Van Bibber pulled out a chair
and dropped into it. His side was towards Walters, so that he did not
see him. He had some men with him, and he was explaining how he had
missed his train and had come back to find that one of the party had
eaten the dinner without him, and he wondered who it could be; and then
turning easily in his seat he saw Walters with the green mint and the
cigar, trembling behind a copy of the London Graphic.
"Walters!" said Van Bibber, "what are you doing here?"
Walters looked his guilt and rose stiffly. He began with a feeble "If
you please, sir--"
"Go back to my rooms and wait for me there," said Van Bibber, who was
too decent a fellow to scold a servant in public.
Walters rose and left the half-finished cigar and the mint with the ice
melting in it on the table. His one evening of sublimity was over, and
he walked away, bending before the glance of his young master and the
smiles of his master's friends.
When Van Bibber came back he found on his dressing-table a note from
Walters stating that he could not, of course, expect to remain longer
in his service, and that he left behind him the twenty-eight dollars
which the dinner had cost.
"If he had only gone off with all my waistcoats and scarf-pins, I'd
have liked it better," said Van Bibber, "than his leaving me cash for
infernal dinner. Why, a servant like Walters is worth
twenty-eight-dollar dinners--twice a day."