A boy was passing with the evening papers, and I hurried out to get one, rather thoughtlessly, for we have all the papers in the club. Unfortunately, I misunderstood the direction the boy had taken; but round the first corner (out of sight of the club windows) I saw the girl Jenny, and so asked her how William’s wife was.
‘Did he send you to me?’ she replied, impertinently taking me for a waiter. ‘My!’ she added, after a second scrutiny, ‘I b’lieve you’re one of them. His missis is a bit better, and I was to tell him as she took all the tapiocar.’
‘How could you tell him?’ I asked.
‘I was to do like this,’ she replied, and went through the supping of something out of a plate in dumb-show.
‘That would not show she ate all the tapioca,’ I said.
‘But I was to end like this,’ she answered, licking an imaginary plate with her tongue.
I gave her a shilling (to get rid of her), and returned to the club disgusted.
Later in the evening I had to go to the club library for a book, and while William was looking in vain for it (I had forgotten the title) I said to him:
‘By the way, William, Mr. Myddleton Finch is to tell the committee that he was mistaken in the charge he brought against you, so you will doubtless be restored to the dining-room to-morrow.’
The two members were still in their chairs, probably sleeping lightly; yet he had the effrontery to thank me.
‘Don’t thank me,’ I said, blushing at the imputation. ‘Remember your place, William!’
‘But Mr. Myddleton Finch knew I swore,’ he insisted.
‘A gentleman,’ I replied, stiffly, ‘cannot remember for twenty-four hours what a waiter has said to him.’
‘No, sir; but–’
To stop him I had to say: ‘And, ah, William, your wife is a little better. She has eaten the tapioca – all of it.’
‘How can you know, sir?’
‘By an accident.’
‘Jenny signed to the window?’
‘No.’
‘Then you saw her, and went out, and–’
‘Nonsense!’
‘Oh, sir, to do that for me! May God bl–’
‘William!’
‘Forgive me, sir; but – when I tell my missis, she will say it was thought of your own wife as made you do it.’
He wrung my hand. I dared not withdraw it, lest we should waken the sleepers.
William returned to the dining-room, and I had to show him that if he did not cease looking gratefully at me I must change my waiter. I also ordered him to stop telling me nightly how his wife was, but I continued to know, as I could not help seeing the girl Jenny from the window. Twice in a week I learned from this objectionable child that the ailing woman had again eaten all the tapioca. Then I became suspicious of William. I will tell why.
It began with a remark of Captain Upjohn’s. We had been speaking of the inconvenience of not being able to get a hot dish served after 1 A.M., and he said:
‘It is because these lazy waiters would strike. If the beggars had a love of their work they would not rush away from the club the moment one o’clock strikes. That glum fellow who often waits on you takes to his heels the moment he is clear of the club steps. He ran into me the other night at the top of the street, and was off without apologising.’
‘You mean the foot of the street, Upjohn,’ I said; for such is the way to Drury Lane.
‘No; I mean the top. The man was running west.’
‘East.’
‘West.’
I smiled, which so annoyed him that he bet me two to one in sovereigns. The bet could have been decided most quickly by asking William a question, but I thought, foolishly doubtless, that it might hurt his feelings, so I watched him leave the club. The possibility of Upjohn’s winning the bet had seemed remote to me. Conceive my surprise, therefore when William went westward.
Amazed, I pursued him along two streets without realising that I was doing so. Then curiosity put me into a hansom. We followed William, and it proved to be a three-shilling fare, for, running when he was in breath and walking when he was out of it, he took me to West Kensington.
I discharged my cab, and from across the street watched William’s incomprehensible behaviour. He had stopped at a dingy row of workmen’s houses, and knocked at the darkened window of one of them. Presently a light showed. So far as I could see, someone pulled up the blind and for ten minutes talked to William. I was uncertain whether they talked, for the window was not opened, and I felt that, had William spoken through the glass loud enough to be heard inside, I must have heard him too. Yet he nodded and beckoned. I was still bewildered when, by setting off the way he had come, he gave me the opportunity of going home.
Knowing from the talk of the club what the lower orders are, could I doubt that this was some discreditable love-affair of William’s? His solicitude for his wife had been mere pretence; so far as it was genuine, it meant that he feared she might recover. He probably told her that he was detained nightly in the club till three.
I was miserable next day, and blamed the deviled kidneys for it. Whether William was unfaithful to his wife was nothing to me, but I had two plain reasons for insisting on his going straight home from his club: the one that, as he had made me lose a bet, I must punish him; the other that he could wait upon me better if he went to bed betimes.
Yet I did not question him. There was something in his face that – Well, I seemed to see his dying wife in it.
I was so out of sorts that I could eat no dinner. I left the club. Happening to stand for some time at the foot of the street, I chanced to see the girl Jenny coming, and – no; let me tell the truth, though the whole club reads: I was waiting for her.
‘How is William’s wife to-day?’ I asked.
‘She told me to nod three times,’ the little slattern replied; ‘but she looked like nothing but a dead one till she got the brandy.’
‘Hush, child!’ I said, shocked. ‘You don’t know how the dead look.’
‘Bless yer,’ she answered, ‘don’t I just! Why, I’ve helped to lay ’em out. I’m going on seven.’
‘Is William good to his wife?’
‘Course he is. Ain’t she his missis?’
‘Why should that make him good to her?’ I asked, cynically, out of my knowledge of the poor. But the girl, precocious in many ways, had never had any opportunities of studying the lower classes in the newspapers, fiction, and club talk. She shut one eye, and, looking up wonderingly, said:
‘Ain’t you green – just!’
‘When does William reach home at night?’
‘’Tain’t night; it’s morning. When I wakes up at half dark and half light, and hears a door shutting, I know as it’s either father going off to his work or Mr. Hicking come home from his.’
‘Who is Mr. Hicking?’
‘Him as we’ve been speaking on – William. We calls him mister, ’cause he’s a toff. Father’s just doing jobs in Covent Gardens, but Mr. Hicking, he’s a waiter, and a clean shirt every day. The old woman would like father to be a waiter, but he hain’t got the ’ristocratic look.’
‘What old woman?’
‘Go ’long! that’s my mother. Is it true there’s a waiter in the club just for to open the door?’
‘Yes; but–’
‘And another just for to lick the stamps? My!’
‘William leaves the club at one o’clock?’ I said, interrogatively.
She nodded. ‘My mother,’ she said, ‘is one to talk, and she says Mr. Hicking as he should get away at twelve, ’cause his missis needs him more’n the gentlemen need him. The old woman do talk.’
‘And what does William answer to that?’
‘He says as the gentlemen can’t be kept waiting for their cheese.’
‘But William does not go straight home when he leaves the club?’