|This is the story, among others, of Henry the waiter--or, as
he now prefers to call himself, Henri--told to me in the long
dining-room of the Riffel Alp Hotel, where I once stayed for a
melancholy week “between seasons,” sharing the echoing emptiness
of the place with two maiden ladies, who talked all day to one
another in frightened whispers. Henry's construction I have
discarded for its amateurishness; his method being generally to
commence a story at the end, and then, working backwards to the
beginning, wind up with the middle. But in all other respects I
have endeavoured to retain his method, which was individual;
and this, I think, is the story as he would have told it to me
himself, had he told it in this order:
My first place--well to be honest, it was a coffee shop in the
Mile End Road--I'm not ashamed of it. We all have our beginnings.
Young “Kipper,” as we called him--he had no name of his own, not
that he knew of anyhow, and that seemed to fit him down to the
ground--had fixed his pitch just outside, between our door and the
music hall at the corner; and sometimes, when I might happen to
have a bit on, I'd get a paper from him, and pay him for it, when
the governor was not about, with a mug of coffee, and odds
and ends that the other customers had left on their plates--an
arrangement that suited both of us. He was just about as sharp as
they make boys, even in the Mile End Road, which is saying a good
deal; and now and then, spying around among the right sort, and
keeping his ears open, he would put me up to a good thing, and I
would tip him a bob or a tanner as the case might be. He was the
sort that gets on--you know.
One day in he walks, for all the world as if the show belonged to
him, with a young imp of a girl on his arm, and down they sits at
one of the tables.
“Garsong,” he calls out, “what's the menoo to-day?”
“The menoo to-day,” I says, “is that you get outside 'fore I clip
you over the ear, and that you take that back and put it where you
found it;” meaning o' course, the kid.
She was a pretty little thing, even then, in spite of the dirt,
with those eyes like saucers, and red hair. It used to be called
“carrots” in those days. Now all the swells have taken it up--or
as near as they can get to it--and it's auburn.
[Illustration: 0006]
“'Enery,” he replied to me, without so much as turning a hair,
“I'm afraid you're forgetting your position. When I'm on the kerb
shouting 'Speshul!' and you comes to me with yer 'a'penny in yer
'and, you're master an' I'm man. When I comes into your shop to
order refreshments, and to pay for 'em, I'm boss. Savey? You
can bring me a rasher and two eggs, and see that they're this
season's. The lidy will have a full-sized haddick and a cocoa.”
Well, there was justice in what he said. He always did have sense,
and I took his order. You don't often see anybody put it away like
that girl did. I took it she hadn't had a square meal for many a
long day. She polished off a ninepenny haddick, skin and all, and
after that she had two penny rashers, with six slices of bread and
butter--“doorsteps,” as we used to call them--and two half pints
of cocoa, which is a meal in itself the way we used to make it.
“Kipper” must have had a bit of luck that day. He couldn't have
urged her on more had it been a free feed.
“'Ave an egg,” he suggested, the moment the rashers had
disappeared. “One of these eggs will just about finish yer.”
“I don't really think as I can,” says she, after considering like.
“Well, you know your own strength,” he answers. “Perhaps you're
best without it. Speshully if yer not used to 'igh living.”
I was glad to see them finish, 'cause I was beginning to get a bit
nervous about the coin, but he paid up right enough, and giv me a
ha'penny for myself.
That was the first time I ever waited upon those two, but it
wasn't to be the last by many a long chalk, as you'll see. He
often used to bring her in after that. Who she was and what she
was he didn't know, and she didn't know, so there was a pair of
them. She'd run away from an old woman down Limehouse way, who
used to beat her. That was all she could tell him. He got her
a lodging with an old woman, who had an attic in the same house
where he slept--when it would run to that--taught her to yell
“Speshul!” and found a corner for her. There ain't room for boys
and girls in the Mile-End Road. They're either kids down there or
they're grown-ups. “Kipper” and “Carrots”--as we named her--looked
upon themselves as sweethearts, though he couldn't have been more
than fifteen, and she barely twelve; and that he was regular gone
on her anyone could see with half an eye. Not that he was soft
about it--that wasn't his style. He kept her in order, and she had
just to mind, which I guess was a good thing for her, and when she
wanted it he'd use his hand on her, and make no bones about it.
That's the way among that class. They up and give the old woman
a friendly clump, just as you or me would swear at the missus, or
fling a boot-jack at her. They don't mean anything more.
I left the coffee shop later on for a place in the city, and
saw nothing more of them for five years. When I did it was at a
restaurant in Oxford Street--one of those amatoor shows run by a
lot of women, who know nothing about the business, and spend the
whole day gossiping and flirting--“love-shops,” I call 'em. There
was a yellow-haired lady manageress who never heard you when you
spoke to her, 'cause she was always trying to hear what some seedy
old fool would be whispering to her across the counter. Then there
were waitresses, and their notion of waiting was to spend an
hour talking to a twopenny cup of coffee, and to look haughty and
insulted whenever anybody as really wanted something ventured to
ask for it. A frizzle-haired cashier used to make love all day out
of her pigeon-hole with the two box-office boys from the Oxford
Music Hall, who took it turn and turn about. Sometimes she'd leave
off to take a customer's money, and sometimes she wouldn't. I've
been to some rummy places in my time; and a waiter ain't the blind
owl as he's supposed to be. But never in my life have I seen so
much love-making, not all at once, as used to go on in that place.
It was a dismal, gloomy sort of hole, and spoony couples seemed to
scent it out by instinct, and would spend hours there over a
pot of tea and assorted pastry. “Idyllic,” some folks would have
thought it: I used to get the fair dismals watching it. There was
one girl--a weird-looking creature, with red eyes and long thin
hands, that gave you the creeps to look at. She'd come in regular
with her young man, a pale-faced nervous sort of chap, at three
o'clock every afternoon. Theirs was the funniest love-making I
ever saw. She'd pinch him under the table, and run pins into
him, and he'd sit with his eyes glued on her as if she'd been a
steaming dish of steak and onions and he a starving beggar the
other side of the window. A strange story that was--as I came to
learn it later on. I'll tell you that, one day.
I'd been engaged for the “heavy work,” but as the heaviest order I
ever heard given there was for a cold ham and chicken, which I had
to slip out for to the nearest cook-shop, I must have been chiefly
useful from an ornamental point of view.
I'd been there about a fortnight, and was feeling pretty sick of
it, when in walked young “Kipper.” I didn't know him at first,
he'd changed so. He was swinging a silver-mounted crutch stick,
which was the kind that was fashionable just then, and was dressed
in a showy check suit and a white hat. But the thing that struck
me most was his gloves. I suppose I hadn't improved quite so much
myself, for he knew me in a moment, and held out his hand.
“What, 'Enery!” he says, “you've moved on, then!”
“Yes,” I says, shaking hands with him, “and I could move on again
from this shop without feeling sad. But you've got on a bit?” I
says.
“So-so,” he says, “I'm a journalist.”
“Oh,” I says, “what sort?” for I'd seen a good many of that lot
during six months I'd spent at a house in Fleet Street, and their
get-up hadn't sumptuousness about it, so to speak. “Kipper's”
rig-out must have totted up to a tidy little sum. He had a diamond
pin in his tie that must have cost somebody fifty quid, if not
him.
“Well,” he answers, “I don't wind out the confidential advice to
old Beaky, and that sort of thing. I do the tips, yer know. 'Cap'n
Kit,' that's my name.”
“What, the Captain Kit?” I says. O' course I'd heard of him.
“Be'old!” he says.
“Oh, it's easy enough,” he goes on. “Some of 'em's bound to come
out right, and when one does, you take it from me, our paper
mentions the fact. And when it is a wrong 'un--well, a man can't
always be shouting about himself, can 'e?”
He ordered a cup of coffee. He said he was waiting for someone,
and we got to chatting about old times.
“How's Carrots?” I asked.
“Miss Caroline Trevelyan,” he answered, “is doing well.”
“Oh,” I says, “you've found out her fam'ly name, then?”
“We've found out one or two things about that lidy,” he replies.
“D'yer remember 'er dancing?”
“I have seen her flinging her petticoats about outside the shop,
when the copper wasn't by, if that's what you mean,” I says.
“That's what I mean,” he answers. “That's all the rage now,
'skirt-dancing' they calls it. She's a-coming out at the Oxford
to-morrow. It's 'er I'm waiting for. She's a-coming on, I tell you
she is,” he says.
“Shouldn't wonder,” says I; “that was her disposition.”
“And there's another thing we've found out about 'er,” he says. He
leant over the table, and whispered it, as if he was afraid that
anybody else might hear: “she's got a voice.”
“Yes,” I says, “some women have.”
“Ah,” he says, “but 'er voice is the sort of voice yer want to
listen to.”
“Oh,” I says, “that's its speciality, is it?”
“That's it, sonny,” he replies.
She came in a little later. I'd a' known her anywhere for her
eyes, and her red hair, in spite of her being that clean you might
have eaten your dinner out of her hand. And as for her clothes!
Well, I've mixed a good deal with the toffs in my time, and I've
seen duchesses dressed more showily and maybe more expensively,
but her clothes seemed to be just a framework to show her up. She
was a beauty, you can take it from me; and it's not to be wondered
that the La-De-Das were round her when they did see her, like
flies round an open jam tart.
Before three months were up she was the rage of London--leastways
of the music-hall part of it--with her portrait in all the shop
windows, and interviews with her in half the newspapers. It seems
she was the daughter of an officer who had died in India when she
was a baby, and the niece of a bishop somewhere in Australia.
He was dead too. There didn't seem to be any of her ancestry as
wasn't dead, but they had all been swells. She had been educated
privately, she had, by a relative; and had early displayed an
aptitude for dancing, though her friends at first had much opposed
her going upon the stage. There was a lot more of it--you know the
sort of thing. Of course, she was a connection of one of our
best known judges--they all are--and she merely acted in order
to support a grandmother, or an invalid sister, I forget which. A
wonderful talent for swallowing, these newspaper chaps has, some
of 'em!
“Kipper” never touched a penny of her money, but if he had been
her agent at twenty-five per cent. he couldn't have worked harder,
and he just kept up the hum about her, till if you didn't want
to hear anything more about Caroline Trevelyan, your only chance
would have been to lie in bed, and never look at a newspaper. It
was Caroline Trevelyan at Home, Caroline Trevelyan at Brighton,
Caroline Trevelyan and the Shah of Persia, Caroline Trevelyan and
the Old Apple-woman. When it wasn't Caroline Trevelyan herself it
would be Caroline Trevelyan's dog as would be doing something out
of the common, getting himself lost or summoned or drowned--it
didn't matter much what.
I moved from Oxford Street to the new “Horseshoe” that year--it
had just been rebuilt--and there I saw a good deal of them,
for they came in to lunch there or supper pretty regular. Young
“Kipper”--or the “Captain” as everybody called him--gave out that
he was her half-brother.
“I'ad to be some sort of a relation, you see,” he explained to
me. “I'd a' been 'er brother out and out; that would have been
simpler, only the family likeness wasn't strong enough. Our styles
o' beauty ain't similar.” They certainly wasn't.
“Why don't you marry her?” I says, “and have done with it?”
He looked thoughtful at that. “I did think of it,” he says, “and
I know, jolly well, that if I 'ad suggested it 'fore she'd found
herself, she'd have agreed, but it don't seem quite fair now.”
“How d'ye mean fair?” I says.
“Well, not fair to 'er,” he says. “I've got on all right, in a
small way; but she--well, she can just 'ave 'er pick of the nobs.
There's one on 'em as I've made inquiries about. 'E'll be a dock,
if a kid pegs out as is expected to, and anyhow 'e'll be a markis,
and 'e means the straight thing--no errer. It ain't fair for me to
stand in 'er way.”
“Well,” I says, “you know your own business, but it seems to me
she wouldn't have much way to stand in if it hadn't been for you.”
“Oh, that's all right,” he says. “I'm fond enough of the gell, but
I shan't clamour for a tombstone with wiolets, even if she ain't
ever Mrs. Capt'n Kit. Business is business; and I ain't going to
queer 'er pitch for 'er.”
I've often wondered what she'd a' said, if he'd up and put the
case to her plain, for she was a good sort; but, naturally enough,
her head was a bit swelled, and she'd read so much rot about
herself in the papers that she'd got at last to half believe some
of it. The thought of her connection with the well-known judge
seemed to hamper her at times, and she wasn't quite so chummy with
“Kipper” as used to be the case in the Mile-End Road days, and he
wasn't the sort as is slow to see a thing.
One day when he was having lunch by himself, and I was waiting on
him, he says, raising his glass to his lips, “Well, 'Enery, here's
luck to yer! I won't be seeing you agen for some time.”
“Oh,” I says. “What's up now?”
“I am,” he says, “or rather my time is. I'm off to Africa.”
“Oh,” I says, “and what about--”
“That's all right,” he interrupts. “I've fixed up that--a treat.
Truth, that's why I'm going.”