“No,” he says, “she's going to be the Duchess of Ridingshire with
the kind consent o' the kid I spoke about. If not, she'll be the
Marchioness of Appleford. 'E's doing the square thing. There's
going to be a quiet marriage to-morrow at the Registry Office, and
then I'm off.”
“What need for you to go?” I says.
“No need,” he says; “it's a fancy o' mine. You see, me gone,
there's nothing to 'amper 'er--nothing to interfere with 'er
settling down as a quiet, respectable toff. With a 'alf-brother,
who's always got to be spry with some fake about 'is lineage and
'is ancestral estates, and who drops 'is 'h's,' complications
are sooner or later bound to a-rise. Me out of it--everything's
simple. Savey?”
Well, that's just how it happened. Of course, there was a big row
when the family heard of it, and a smart lawyer was put up to try
and undo the thing. No expense was spared, you bet; but it was all
no go. Nothing could be found out against her. She just sat tight
and said nothing. So the thing had to stand. They went and lived
quietly in the country and abroad for a year or two, and then
folks forgot a bit, and they came back to London. I often used to
see her name in print, and then the papers always said as how she
was charming and graceful and beautiful, so I suppose the family
had made up its mind to get used to her.
One evening in she comes to the Savoy. My wife put me up to
getting that job, and a good job it is, mind you, when you know
your way about. I'd never have had the cheek to try for it, if it
hadn't been for the missis. She's a clever one--she is. I did a
good day's work when I married her.
“You shave off that moustache of yours--it ain't an ornament,” she
says to me, “and chance it. Don't get attempting the lingo. Keep
to the broken English, and put in a shrug or two. You can manage
that all right.”
I followed her tip. Of course the manager saw through me, but
I got in a “Oui, monsieur” now and again, and they, being short
handed at the time, could not afford to be strict, I suppose.
Anyhow I got took on, and there I stopped for the whole season,
and that was the making of me.
Well, as I was saying, in she comes to the supper rooms, and toffy
enough she looked in her diamonds and furs, and as for haughtiness
there wasn't a born Marchioness she couldn't have given points to.
She comes straight up to my table and sits down. Her husband was
with her, but he didn't seem to have much to say, except to repeat
her orders. Of course I looked as if I'd never set eyes on her
before in all my life, though all the time she was a-pecking at
the mayonnaise and a-sipping at the Giessler, I was thinking
of the coffee-shop and of the ninepenny haddick and the pint of
cocoa.
“Go and fetch my cloak,” she says to him after a while. “I am
cold.”
And up he gets and goes out.
She never moved her head, and spoke as though she was merely
giving me some order, and I stands behind her chair, respectful
like, and answers according to the same tip.
“Ever hear from 'Kipper'?” she says to me.
“I have had one or two letters from him, your ladyship,” I
answers.
“Oh, stow that,” she says. “I am sick of 'your ladyship.' Talk
English; I don't hear much of it. How's he getting on?”
“Seems to be doing himself well,” I says. “He's started an hotel,
and is regular raking it in, he tells me.”
“Wish I was behind the bar with him!” says she.
“Why, don't it work then?” I asks.
“It's just like a funeral with the corpse left out,” says she.
“Serves me jolly well right for being a fool!”
The Marquis, he comes back with her cloak at that moment, and I
says: “Certainement, madame,” and gets clear.
I often used to see her there, and when a chance occurred she
would talk to me. It seemed to be a relief to her to use her own
tongue, but it made me nervous at times for fear someone would
hear her.
Then one day I got a letter from “Kipper” to say he was over for
a holiday and was stopping at Morley's, and asking me to look him
up.
He had not changed much except to get a bit fatter and more
prosperous-looking. Of course, we talked about her ladyship, and I
told him what she said.
“Rum things, women,” he says; “never know their own minds.”
“Oh, they know them all right when they get there,” I says. “How
could she tell what being a Marchioness was like till she'd tried
it?”
“Pity,” he says, musing like. “I reckoned it the very thing she'd
tumble to. I only come over to get a sight of 'er, and to satisfy
myself as she was getting along all right. Seems I'd better a'
stopped away.”
“You ain't ever thought of marrying yourself?” I asks.
“Yes, I have,” he says. “It's slow for a man over thirty with no
wife and kids to bustle him, you take it from me, and I ain't the
talent for the Don Juan fake.”
“You're like me,” I says, “a day's work, and then a pipe by your
own fireside with your slippers on. That's my swarry. You'll find
someone as will suit you before long.”
“No I shan't,” says he. “I've come across a few as might, if it
'adn't been for 'er. It's like the toffs as come out our way.
They've been brought up on 'ris de veau a la financier,' and sich
like, and it just spoils 'em for the bacon and greens.”
I give her the office the next time I see her, and they met
accidental like in Kensington Gardens early one morning. What they
said to one another I don't know, for he sailed that same evening,
and, it being the end of the season, I didn't see her ladyship
again for a long while.
When I did it was at the Hotel Bristol in Paris, and she was in
widow's weeds, the Marquis having died eight months before. He
never dropped into that dukedom, the kid turning out healthier
than was expected, and hanging on; so she was still only a
Marchioness, and her fortune, though tidy, was nothing very
big--not as that class reckons. By luck I was told to wait on her,
she having asked for someone as could speak English. She seemed
glad to see me and to talk to me.
“Well,” I says, “I suppose you'll be bossing that bar in Capetown
now before long?”
“Talk sense,” she answers. “How can the Marchioness of Appleford
marry a hotel keeper?”
“Why not,” I says, “if she fancies him? What's the good of being a
Marchioness if you can't do what you like?”
“That's just it,” she snaps out; “you can't. It would not be doing
the straight thing by the family. No,” she says, “I've spent
their money, and I'm spending it now. They don't love me, but they
shan't say as I have disgraced them. They've got their feelings
same as I've got mine.”
“Why not chuck the money?” I says. “They'll be glad enough to get
it back,” they being a poor lot, as I heard her say.
“How can I?” she says. “It's a life interest. As long as I live
I've got to have it, and as long as I live I've got to remain the
Marchioness of Appleford.”
She finishes her soup, and pushes the plate away from her. “As
long as I live,” she says, talking to herself.
“By Jove!” she says, starting up “why not?”
“Why not what?” I says.
“Nothing,” she answers. “Get me an African telegraph form, and be
quick about it!”
I fetched it for her, and she wrote it and gave it to the porter
then and there; and, that done, she sat down and finished her
dinner.
She was a bit short with me after that; so I judged it best to
keep my own place.
In the morning she got an answer that seemed to excite her,
and that afternoon she left; and the next I heard of her was a
paragraph in the newspaper, headed--“Death of the Marchioness of
Appleford. Sad accident.” It seemed she had gone for a row on one
of the Italian lakes with no one but a boatman. A squall had come
on, and the boat had capsized. The boatman had swum ashore, but he
had been unable to save his passenger, and her body had never been
recovered. The paper reminded its readers that she had formerly
been the celebrated tragic actress, Caroline Trevelyan, daughter
of the well-known Indian judge of that name.
It gave me the blues for a day or two--that bit of news. I had
known her from a baby as you might say, and had taken an interest
in her. You can call it silly, but hotels and restaurants seemed
to me less interesting now there was no chance of ever seeing her
come into one again.
I went from Paris to one of the smaller hotels in Venice. The
missis thought I'd do well to pick up a bit of Italian, and
perhaps she fancied Venice for herself. That's one of the
advantages of our profession. You can go about. It was a
second-rate sort of place, and one evening, just before
lighting-up time, I had the salle-a-manger all to myself, and
had just taken up a paper when I hears the door open, and I turns
round.
I saw “her” coming down the room. There was no mistaking her. She
wasn't that sort.
I sat with my eyes coming out of my head till she was close to me,
and then I says:
“Carrots!” I says, in a whisper like. That was the name that come
to me.
“'Carrots' it is,” she says, and down she sits just opposite to
me, and then she laughs.
I could not speak, I could not move, I was that took aback, and
the more frightened I looked the more she laughed till “Kipper”
comes into the room. There was nothing ghostly about him. I never
see a man look more as if he had backed the winner.
[Illustration: 0047]
“Why, it's 'Enery,” he says; and he gives me a slap on the back,
as knocks the life into me again.
“I heard you was dead,” I says, still staring at her. “I read it
in the paper--'death of the Marchioness of Appleford.'”
“That's all right,” she says. “The Marchioness of Appleford is
as dead as a door-nail, and a good job too. Mrs. Captain Kit's my
name, nee 'Carrots.'”
“You said as 'ow I'd find someone to suit me 'fore long,” says
“Kipper” to me, “and, by Jove! you were right; I 'ave. I was
waiting till I found something equal to her ladyship, and I'd 'ave
'ad to wait a long time, I'm thinking, if I 'adn't come across
this one 'ere”; and he tucks her up under his arm just as
I remember his doing that day he first brought her into the
coffee-shop, and Lord, what a long time ago that was!
* * * * *
That is the story, among others, told me by Henry, the waiter. I
have, at his request, substituted artificial names for real ones.
For Henry tells me that at Capetown Captain Kit's First-class
Family and Commercial Hotel still runs, and that the landlady is
still a beautiful woman with fine eyes and red hair, who might
almost be taken for a duchess--until she opens her mouth, when her
accent is found to be still slightly reminiscent of the Mile-End
Road.